Harry Delacour Potter and the Goblet of Fire
by I Took the One Less Travelled
Summary: The last thing that Apolline Delacour expected to find on vacation was the Boy-Who-Lived. And she certainly didn't expect to betroth him to her daughter Gabrielle, either. Follow Harry and his sister Fleur through the TriWizard Tournament. AU. On temporary hiatus until I get the chance to look at my plots and see what needs rewriting. Sorry. :(.
1. Prologue

**A/N: Hi, people. I've finally gotten into writing a full-length story. No guarantees towards my reliability, since it depends on my interest in what's happening in the story. But basically, Jean-Paul and Apolline Delacour were on vacation in Majorca with their two daughters, six-year old Fleur and the infant Gabrielle when they encountered the Dursleys with Dudley and Harry, both of them three. They immediately recognized him, and were appalled by the conditions that the Boy-Who-Lived was being raised in. The only legal way for them to quickly wrest control of Harry from the Dursleys was to betroth him to their daughter Gabrielle. It had to be Gabrielle because Fleur was already betrothed to someone else. The betrothal contracts are easy to escape and it served as a method to get him out of there more than anything. He was raised by the Delacours in France, but when it came time to send him to school, they decided to coincide with the wishes of his late parents and send him to Hogwarts instead of Beauxbatons, despite their serious misgivings about an idiot who could leave an infant on a doorstep in November in England, and then allow him to be abused and neglected for several years without looking in on him. Aside from the scenes that I'm going to show here, in a prologue of sorts, it happens through his first three years as in canon.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I do not own any other outside references to other literature or media. Any and all recognizable content from the Harry Potter Franchise belongs to J.K. Rowling.**

**BTW, I've decided to go with Gabrielle's age in the movies (three years younger than Harry) rather than the books (six years younger than Harry). First of all, six years is already a large age gap between siblings, and the books portray the gap between Fleur and Gabrielle to be nine years. While this is entirely possible, it just seems less realistic. Also, it suited my purposes for her to be at Hogwarts with Harry during most of his fourth year, rather than just for the second task. This would mean that she would have to be eleven and enrolled at Beauxbatons. That is all. On with the story/travesty of human justice.**

**July 31****st****, 1991**

_Boom_. The entire entryway of the large, stylistic mansion shook with force. Gabbi Delacour, the youngest member of the household, as well as the person with the bedroom closest to the front, shook awake at the noise.

_Boom_. Positive she was not imagining it now, she slid out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown and crossed the room to the door.

_Boom_. The third bang brought her fear to the surface, and she felt feathers pushing at her joints, her Veela form wishing to come out and protect her from the threat. The eight-year-old resisted the urge and instead slipped into the hallway and ran across the house to Harry's room. Several more _Booms_ echoed on her way, the last one ending with a loud crash of wood being destroyed, just as she reached her betrothed's door.

"Harry," she squealed softly, not wanting to wake anyone else. She wormed her way under the covers and into his arms. "Harry, I'm scared. There's someone at the door, and they're making a lot of noise."

"Gabbi?" Harry blearily rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Midnight. That meant that he was eleven, but he didn't care at the moment, much more concerned about Gabbi. "What happened? Say more slowly this time."

"There's someone at the door!" She half-shrieked, half whispered.

Harry's head snapped around, now hearing the distant noise. Meanwhile, the rest of the house had caught on to what was going on. Harry kept himself in front of Gabbi as they walked into the entryway. There was a _huge_ man framed in the doorway.

"Alright, Harry?" the man boomed in English, a language that Harry was entirely familiar with due to his adopted parents' plan to send him to an English school. Gabbi, having also been taught from the cradle to be multi-linguistic, understood.

"Who are you?" The heavily accented voice belonged to Jean-Paul Delacour, a powerful politician in the French Ministry of Magic. "Vhat is zee meaning of zis?"

The giant actually seemed to blush. "Sorry bout the door, Mr. Delacour. And I'm Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds of Hogwarts."

"Oh!" Harry's mother-figure, the gorgeous Apolline Delacour, put her hand over her heart. "I thought you weren't coming until morning! Why don't you come inside and we'll sort this out." Unlike her husband's tone, Apolline had been taught English from a very young age, so she didn't display the same accent that her husband had.

There was a flurry of activity in the doorway. Gabrielle's older sister, and Harry's in all but blood, arrived in a flurry of flowing silk fabric. Harry immediately shifted over so that he was covering Fleur as well as Gabbi. He wouldn't let anything happen to either his sister or his betrothed.

The giant looked sheepish as he picked up the fallen pane of the massive French door from the ground and fitted it back into the frame. "I was jus' excited, see. Haven't seen Harry since he was a baby. Happy birthday, Harry."

Harry sighed crossly. "Well, now that you've seen me, do you mind if I go back to bed?"

"Sorry," the giant repeated. "I'll jus' be goin. I'll come back in the morning."

"Don't be ridiculous," Apolline declared with authority. "You'll come and stay in one of the guest rooms until morning."

"Thank you, Mam," the man said.

"Don't be ridiculous, you must be older than me by several years. You must call me Apolline. Harry, Gabbi, Fleur, this is Monsieur Hagrid. He knew your parents, Harry. There are several things on your school supply list that we can't get in Paris, so we needed to go the London for them. Professor Dumbledore graciously offered to send us a guide to the Alley in London, in order to avoid confusion."

"Please, Mam- Apolline—" he added, as she glared at him. "Jus' Hagrid is fine. I'm no Monsieur. I aven't seen you since you were a little baby, Arry."

"Missy!" Apolline called in French. One of the house elves appeared in front of her with a crack.

"How can Missy be of service to the Mistress Apolline tonight?" the elf asked.

"Would you please show Hagrid to one of the spare bedrooms in the East Wing? Then we will all go to bed and commence this conversation at a more reasonable hour."

"But Apolline!" Harry called in French. "Gabbi's room is in that wing." Well used to his overprotective, White Knight tendencies, especially where his betrothed was concerned, Apolline simply sighed.

"Gabrielle is in no danger from Hagrid, Harry," she murmured. "But if it truly worries you, she can sleep in your room for the rest of the night."

Sighing in relief, Harry thanked her, echoed with a "thank you, Maman."

"Now go. Off to bed, both of you. We've a long day of shopping in the morning."

**September 1****st****, 1991**

King's Cross station was packed with people, all of whom stared with awe at Apolline and Fleur, who was just coming into her allure and had no idea how to really control it. It had the unfortunate habit of making all men other than her father and Harry, who had long built up an immunity by now fall at her feet at the most inconvenient times. Well used to this sort of attention, the Delacour family stared in exasperation at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Hagrid had neglected to explain how to actually _get_ to platform nine and three-quarters, leaving all of them confused.

Except for Gabbi, who was clinging desperately to Harry's hand and hoping that something would happen to prevent him from having to go away. Harry was no more eager to leave her. Right at that moment, they were rescued (or doomed, in Gabbi's case) by a red haired family that walked by, a plump woman at the front of the brigade.

"Absolutely _packed_ with muggles, of course. Every year. Now what's the platform number again?"

The red haired girl clinging to her hand answered. "Nine and three quarters, Mum. Oh, Mum, why can't I go too?"

"You're not old enough, Ginny. Now be quiet. Percy, dear, you go first."

Gabrielle perked up at this, having appeared to have found an ally in the same boat as she was. Apolline took charge. "Excuse me, Madam," she interjected politely, as the woman was directing a pair of red headed twins to the barrier. "We're from France, and our guide in Diagon Alley forgot to mention how to get on the platform—"

"Of course, dear, of course," the woman said cheerfully. "I'm Molly Weasley, these are all mine. I've got two more, too. Already graduated."

"Apolline Delacour," Apolline said gratefully.

"Now, to get onto the platform, you just have to go straight through the barrier. Best to do it at a bit of run, since people get nervous. Go ahead now, Ron," she added to the youngest boy.

The boy disappeared through the barrier. "Now, why not send the children through first. They can get to know each other. If one of them wouldn't mind taking Ginny?"

"Of course. Fleur—" the prompt was unneeded, since Harry's sister had already grabbed the red-haired girl's hand from her mother's and started towards the barrier. Harry lifted Gabbi, still so small, to stand on the lower level of the trolley in front of him and started towards the barrier once Fleur and Ginny had cleared the way.

On the other side, he found that Ginny and Fleur had already found the rest of the redheads and were chatting cheerfully. At least Fleur and the oldest redhead, Percy, were chatting. The twins were bothering their sister, and Ron was standing awkwardly to one side.

"And of course I find Veela to be absolutely fascinating," Percy was saying in a pompous sort of tone. "Not even the _Imperius_ curse can produce that sort of reaction in people." Fleur cast her eyes to the open roof.

"It's quite difficult to deal with, see," she attempted to explain.

"Of course it would be. Why don't you have a trunk?"

"I go to Beauxbatons," Fleur explained. "We're just dropping Harry off; Beauxbatons doesn't start for another week."

"Hullo," Ron said sullenly.

"Hi," Harry greeted back. "I'm Harry Potter, this is my betrothed, Gabrielle Delacour."

"Harry Potter?" One of the twins repeated in shock. Harry sighed. He had already had a taste of his fame in the Leaky Cauldron when Hagrid had taken him shopping. He didn't even remotely enjoy it.

"Betrothed?" the other twin asked, equally shocked. "Looks like you can't marry him, ickleGinGin."

Ginny had gone as red as her hair with this statement. Surprisingly, since Gabbi didn't usually react well to people trying to take her Harry away from her, she leapt to the other girl's defence. "You leave her alone. That's a mean thing to do. I'm Gabrielle, but you can call me Gabbi," she added to the redhead.

"Ginevra," the girl said, echoing Gabbi. "But you can call me Ginny."

"Do you have anyone to write with this year, since you aren't starting school yet?"

"No." Ginny looked dejected. "I don't get to go till next year, and these idiots never send me many letters."

"Well you can owl me!" Gabrielle said with a forced cheerful tone. "Since Harry and Fleur are going away."

"I promised that I'd write you as often as Hedwig comes back," Harry protested.

"I know you will, but I still don't know what I'm going to do all day without you around to entertain me."

"I'd love to write you," Ginny interrupted. "But our family owl is practically dead. He can't fly to France and back—"

"Don't worry, I'll just tell Pierre to wait for a reply."

This was settled, right as the parents joined them. It sounded like Fleur and Percy had also agreed to owl each other. Harry hugged his father and kissed his mother goodbye before hugging Gabbi to him tightly. "I promise I'll write to you as often as I can," he said into her ear. Gabbi sniffled a bit, but promised the same.

Fred and George helped him and Ron stow their trunks in a compartment and wander off.

**December 27****th****, 1991**

During his first excursion around the school in his invisibility cloak, Harry had encountered a rather unusual mirror. It showed him with Apolline and Jean-Paul, Fleur next to them. Gabbi had been holding his hand, and beside them—his breath caught in his throat. A tall, dark haired man whose hairstyle was as messy as Harry's, and a gorgeous redheaded woman with sparkling green eyes, his parents. Logically speaking, Harry knew that if his parents had never died, he probably never would have met the Delacours; however, it was such a beautiful image that he came back every night until Dumbledore had told him not to anymore.

**August 1****st****, 1992**

Harry, Fleur and Gabbi arrived at the Weasleys' by Floor bright and early the day after Harry's birthday. Harry and Ron secluded themselves in his room, where Harry told Ron all about Dobby the House Elf's visit. Fleur and Percy had disappeared outside to talk about... something, and Ginny and Gabbi had reunited for the first time since they had seen each other on the platform in June with sounds that resembled small dogs being stepped on. A year of writing back and forth had solidified a strong friendship between the girls. Harry and Ron had stared at the doorway to Ginny's bedroom with dismay before sneaking past it.

The visit was relaxing—except for the shopping trip where Harry had accidently ended up in Knockturn Alley, and then being forcibly photographed by Gilderoy Lockhart—at least until Fleur had smacked the photographer around the head, given Lockhart a sound tongue lashing and pulled Harry away. The confrontation with Draco Malfoy, and subsequent fistfight between Lucius Malfoy and Mr. Weasley had seemed almost tame in comparison to what Fleur had done to Lockhart, before threatening to take legal action if he didn't apologize. Mrs. Weasley had lectured Fleur for her behaviour before Fleur had gone off on Mrs. Weasley, too. And perhaps made Mrs. Weasley consider that the kind of person that would manhandle a twelve year old like they were public property wasn't as great as she seemed to think they were. Fleur and Gabbi had gone home by Floo on August 31st, and Harry had gone with the Weasleys to King's Cross the next day, where the barrier had been blocked and he and Ron had flown Mr. Weasley's flying car to Hogwarts. Instead of the Howler that Ron had received for his behaviour, Harry had gotten a gently admonishing letter from his parents. That said nothing for the Howler that Gabbi had sent over him nearly getting himself killed by a tree, however.

**August 28****th****, 1993**

Unfortunately, the Weasleys had been unable to come stay at the Delacours this summer, since they had won some kind of lottery draw and gone on vacation to see the oldest Weasley brother, Bill in Egypt, instead. Hermione had come to visit for about a week with her parents, sightseeing all of the French Magical sites.

Harry was able to reconnect with his two best friends when they shopped for supplies, and then they didn't see each other until the train.

**A/N: There's all of the things that would have changed majorly through the course of the first three books. Obviously, when Sirius offered Harry a chance to live with him, Harry declined, but expressed the desire to get to know him. Sirius went to France, and since the French ministry isn't as pigheaded as Fudge, he was cleared there. He spent that summer living with the Delacours. Remus went with him, and they hung out until Harry went to the World Cup with the Weasleys. The reason that I have not yet addressed Ginny's crush on Harry is because I am still possibly planning to do a G/H/G pairing. I haven't decided yet. Even if I decide not to, I'll just have Ginny's crush peter off and disappear. The real story starts in book four, which will begin next chapter. Assume that anything that isn't addressed here simply happened the way that it did in canon, on very similarly to it. If there is something blindingly obvious that I've missed, then tell me. Otherwise, use your common sense, people. I am not going to rewrite all of the Christmases, which I will have Harry remaining at Hogwarts for, since major plot points usually happen then, because he got a gift from the Delacours. Obviously, he has been exchanging letters with his parents, Fleur and Gabrielle this whole time. I'm not going to rewrite everything because of that, either. Oh, and don't worry about Percy. I won't be making this a P/F pairing. Bill/Fleur all the way. They're just friends, Percy because he liked the idea of having a French pen pal, and Fleur because she was happy to meet a guy her age that didn't start blubbering at the sight of her, which Ron will do when he's older, though he'll eventually start building an immunity. Can't start drooling whenever he sees his best mate's wife, after all.  
**

**Review and tell me what you think.**

**~I Took The One Less Travelled**


	2. Review Answering Session

**I was going to put this into the next chapter, but it was getting a bit long. I wanted to address some concerns of the reviewers and explain my line of thought and where I'm coming from. I'll post it at the same time as the next chapter, so if you aren't interested, you can just skip along to the next one. **

**About Ron: Harry did not just befriend Ron because he was starved for affection. He befriended Ron because he was the first person on the train that he really met, and they got along well. They were eleven year old boys—their friendships aren't going to get much deeper than that. Ron can be a bit dense, yes, but so can Harry (Read: the whole 'Cho' incident) Newsflash: They're teenage boys. You argue that Harry was abused and belittled all of his life by the Dursleys, but latched on to the first person that treated him differently. Then why would he stay with him? After about two months, he was close to Hermione, too. If Ron really treated the both of them that horribly, they would have ditched him. They didn't. Harry is not a saint either. Harry is short tempered, moody, easily irritable, and he spends a great deal of time snapping at his friends. Hermione is slavishly devoted to the rules, especially in the beginning, nagging, bossy, she's a bit of a know-it-all, which can be very annoying. They all have their flaws, but they do genuinely care for each other. And yes, one of those flaws that Ron has is jealousy. For a **_**completely understandable reason**_**! Ron has horrendously low self-esteem in Philosopher's Stone, Ron says: ****'I'm the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I've got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left — Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy's a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they're really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first.' Ron feels that he can't ever hope to live up to The Head Boy, The Quidditch Captain, The Smart One, The Pranksters, or The Girl. Then Harry does all of these great things and he has everything that Ron's ever wanted and everyone loves him, and yes, he gets jealous. No, it isn't right, and you shouldn't treat your friends like that, but his feelings are understandable. For everyone that has the impression that Ron is a complete troll that uses Harry for attention and Hermione for his homework, I direct you to this link. In fact, I **_**dare you**_** to read it.**

**http:/tvtropes(dot)org/pmwiki/pmwiki(dot)php/Main/RonTheDeathEater**

**Just copy and paste the link. Go on, try it. **

**As for Christmases—in second year, Ron and Hermione stayed for Christmas because they had decided that that was the best time to interrogate Malfoy. Harry would have done the same. In first year, Ron would have been staying anyway, since his parents were going to Romania. Harry probably would have stayed to keep him company. If you say that he never would have been at the Weasleys' house, and Apolline and Jean-Paul would never have let him stay at Hogwarts after everything that he did and all of the danger that he got into: well, look at Hermione! Look at all of the time that she spent with the Weasleys, and look at what happened to her. She never had any problems. If that stuff was being washed out, and they didn't know as much about it, they wouldn't pull him out. **

**Also: Harry's parents' will—whatever gave you the impression that it wasn't read? They had to leave all of their money to him somehow. Some people argue that Dumbledore had the power to seal the will. **_**That is illegal**_**. Dumbledore may be misguided, but he is not evil, and he does not run around purposely doing illegal things. Probably, Harry's parents named several people as guardians that couldn't be for several reasons (Sirius was in Azkaban, Peter was 'dead', and I doubt that anyone was going to let the Boy-Who-Lived anywhere near a werewolf), and he was sent to his closest blood relatives by default. Since Harry is the last Potter, and James didn't have any living blood relatives, Petunia was it. Harry's name was down at Hogwarts since before he was born. That seems like a serious 'last wish' to me. And the Delacours wouldn't have wanted to disrespect the Potters' wishes for their son. **

**Now, what else. Houses—you saw in the beginning how he was determined to get in the way of anything happening to Fleur and Gabrielle? That sounds like Gryffindor material to me. You argue that if Harry had been raised differently, he would have been a completely different person. If Harry had acted meek and abused in canon, I would agree with you. However, Harry doesn't **_**act**_** like an abused child would. He stands up to Snape when Snape is a dick to him, he talks back to McGonagall when he's caught out of bed, he stands up to Malfoy on several occasions. Really, if we're talking about people who resemble abused children, Neville would be the top of that list. Maybe, if he had been raised by Professors, or a Ravenclaw family, he might be in Ravenclaw. But the Delacours raised Fleur. And Fleur stood up to a dragon, merpeople and grindylows, all of the things in that maze. Then she came back and married Bill Weasley, who would never be attracted to a weak nobody. He's a cursebreaker, a Gryffindor, and a Weasley, and helped fight in a war that was really none of her concern. If Fleur was at Hogwarts, I firmly believe that she would have been in Gryffindor. **

**Now, I think that I've covered everything. I hope that explains how I'm thinking in this. You can just move on to the next chapter now. But I refuse to bash Ron because you don't like him. I happen to like Ron, and I think that him and Harry would have ended up friends no matter what. **


	3. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang

**A/N: Here's chapter 1! I've thought about it, and decided that I'm not going to do a threesome pairing, so it's just going to be Harry/Gabrielle, though that's a long way off. A reviewer pointed out that this story is about Harry and the Delacours, and that doing that would take away from the eventual pairing. I happen to agree with this assessment. I'm going to try to follow this story through with a sequel in the same world, where she will eventually be old enough to become more romantically involved with him. Then he'll kill Voldemort and save the world and all of that rot. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own any familiar references. All familiar characters, settings, and creatures are the property of J.K. Rowling. There is some (not very much, but some) text that was copied directly from GOF. I doubly do not own this. That is why you may recognize it.**

**October 30****st****, 1994—Present Day (this is the last date marker that you get)**

The news that the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang would be arriving on October 30th created a firestorm of rumours about the castle. All anyone could talk about was the TriWizard Tournament, and the delegations from the other schools. According to the letters that Harry had been receiving, Fleur and Gabbi were both excited for the excursion as well, though they refused to tell him how they were going to get to Hogwarts.

On the morning before they were supposed to arrive, Harry got out of bed to go down to the Common Room early. It wasn't actually common knowledge that he had been raised in France, or that he was betrothed. In fact, the Weasleys and Hermione seemed to be the only people that actually knew about his current family situation.

Jean-Paul had warned him about Albus Dumbledore before his first year. Dumbledore believed that the only place that Harry would be safe was with his maternal Aunt and her husband, people he hadn't laid eyes on since he was three years old. Dumbledore wouldn't care if Harry was treated terribly there; he was only concerned with protecting Harry from external threats. Therefore, whenever Dumbledore had made some comment or other that showed that he still believed that Harry was living with his muggle relatives, Harry hadn't made any effort to correct him.

His legal adoption could be a matter of public record, however; as long as Dumbledore didn't have any suspicions or reasons to check it he wouldn't bother Harry or his family. Harry was sure that it would come out this year, though. Dumbledore would wonder how he managed to know Madame Maxime so well, seeing as she was an old friend of the family. And Harry wasn't going to pretend not to know Fleur and Gabbi in order to have Dumbledore remain in the dark.

Breakfast was more discussion about the tournament, followed by a Hermione Rant™ about the general treatment of house elves, in which she intimidated Neville about SPEW and ignored Fred and George telling her about the kitchens and how happy the Hogwarts house elves were. Harry, for his part, was staying out of it, glad that Hermione hadn't encountered any of the Delacour family elves during her stay in the manor last summer.

After breakfast, classes seemed to drag on. Ron and Hermione covered for his inattention at least twice with McGonagall, and once with Flitwick. Potions, the last class of the day, seemed to go doubly slow, though this could have been because he hated that class on the best of days, and therefore it seemed to take longer than any other on a regular basis.

Finally, _finally_, Potions ended and the Gryffindor fourth years ascended from the dungeons to go and get their cloaks from their dormitories and meet the rest of the school converging in the entrance hall.

McGonagall lined them all up according to year and fussed over the younger students before turning to him and his classmates

"Straighten your cloak, Longbottom," McGonagall ordered, obviously still disgruntled about the earlier incident during transfiguration during which Neville had managed to transplant his own ears onto a cactus. "And take that ridiculous thing out of your hair, Miss Patil."

Scowling, Parvati slid the large butterfly clip out of her dark hair and put it into her book bag as they followed the procession outside.

Harry draped the two extra black cloaks that he had brought over his arm, knowing that it wasn't nearly so cold in France, and Gabbi and Fleur undoubtedly hadn't thought of putting on their own cloaks.

The procession came to a halt on the lawn facing the lake. Hermione shivered and grabbed Ron's arm to pull him closer, and then in turn huddled them both closer to Harry for warmth. Harry wrapped one arm around both of them, grateful for the impromptu huddle to share body heat.

He wasn't sure how long they stood there for, but most people were starting to get restless when finally a Gryffindor first year whose name Harry didn't know spotted a shape in the sky. "It's a dragon!" she shrieked, losing her head completely. Everyone was now staring at the distant object hurtling forever closer.

"Don't be stupid, it's a flying house!" Dennis called. While Harry thought that this was no more accurate than the first guess, it did turn out to be closer. The shape turned out to be a massive, powder blue carriage pulled by elephant sized Abraxan horses, possibly as big as the sprawling Delacour mansion. It gracefully landed on the lawn beside the lake. Harry knew that this had to be Beauxbatons. Everything that he knew about Durmstrang in particular, and about Karkaroff specifically suggested that they wouldn't go near such a form of transport as this.

He broke into a grin as Madam Maxime's massive, pump clad foot stepped out the door of the carriage. Fleur, as the Head Girl, was hot on her heels, alternately gracefully sweeping and shivering and scanning the crowd, for him; he presumed. The blue silk clad students followed in lines, getting progressively less graceful and more scraggly as the students got smaller, and finally ending the progression with the first years, Gabbi among them. Harry grinned at the sight of his family. Fleur finally saw him and smiled back, but Gabbi did more than that. She catapulted out of the line shrieking his name and threw herself at him.

Laughing, and ignoring the collective stares that he was well used to by now, he swung her up into his arms and held on. Fleur, obviously having given up on dignity in order to ensure that her sister remained under some semblance of control, also left her place to join them. Harry offered her one of the spare cloaks that he had brought, the larger one, before draping the smaller over Gabbi's shoulders.

"Merci," Fleur murmured quietly. Gabbi gratefully wrapped the fabric around herself, it looping several times around her tiny frame.

"Fleur!" Madame Maxime called. "We are going inside now. You want to stay out here until Durmstrang arrives."

"Yes, Madame," Fleur replied. "Gabrielle and I shall remain outside for the moment. As you can see, we are in no danger of freezing, since my wonderful, courteous brother thought to bring us heavy cloaks." All of this was spoken in rapid French.

"Arry!" Madame Maxime had finally recognized him. "I haven't seen you for ages! I was quite disappointed to find that you had decided not to attend Beauxbatons with your sister and betrothed." She then hugged him tightly and kissed both of his cheeks. She was much better at not crushing people than Hagrid was.

"Yes, well..." Harry paused. "My parents had my name down here before I was born. I knew that this was what they would have wanted."

"Don't worry," she said cheerfully, patting his cheek. "I understand completely. You must visit for tea one day, though, yes?"

"Yes, of course, Madame."

"Oh, none of this Madame business. When did you ever have to call me Madame when you were growing up? Fleur and Gabrielle must maintain the school charter as my students, but you are no student of mine."

"Yes, Aunt Olympe," Harry agreed quickly, trying to avoid creating more of a scene than they already had. The rest of the Beauxbatons delegation moved inside, leaving Gabbi and Fleur standing with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

"Blimey, mate! When did you learn to speak French?" Seamus wanted to know, clearly too worried about what the actual situation was right now to ask about Fleur and Gabbi.

"I grew up in France, Seamus. This is my older sister, Fleur, and my betrothed, Gabrielle."

"You can call me Gabbi," she interjected charmingly, sliding her ice-cold fingers into his own and clinging tightly. He saw her taking Hermione's hand with her other free one.

Seamus opened his mouth, and everyone around the vicinity that had heard him all looked shocked. Since Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil had heard him, he knew that the entire school would know before the feast would start, as soon as Durmstrang got here. But Seamus' comment, whatever it was, was halted when a shout rang up across the lawn, and everyone faced the lake. A ship emerged from under the water, docked by throwing down and anchor, and a procession of marching students wearing red robes and thick furs marched off, accompanied by a man with a goatee that looked distinctly rat like.

"Dumbledore!" he called heartily as he walked up the slope. "How are you, my dear fellow, how are you?"

"Blooming, thank you, Professor Karkaroff," Dumbledore replied. Karkaroff had a fruity, unctuous voice; when he stepped into the light pouring from the front doors of the castle they saw that he was tall and thin like Dumbledore, but his white hair was short, and his goatee (finishing in a small curl) did not entirely hide his rather weak chin. When he reached Dumbledore, he shook hands with both of his own.

"Shall we?" Dumbledore asked cheerfully, gesturing towards the doors to the Entrance Hall. The Hogwarts students breathed a collective sigh of relief as they followed the Durmstrang students indoors. Fleur broke off to reattach herself to her Beaxbatons classmates, already tired of Ron drooling at her.

Harry steered Gabbi to the Gryffindor table as the hall flooded with people, the three school heads being the last people in. The Beaxbatons students, Gabbi included, though she was sitting at an entirely different table from her peers, leaped to their feet upon Madame Maxime's entrance and didn't regain their seats until she had been seated in the chair to Dumbledore's left.

"I thought Krum had graduated," Hermione said conversationally, over the sound of gossip from all quarters. Harry Potter lived in France with a hot older sister and an eleven year old betrothed (who would undoubtedly grow up to be just as hot as the older sister, judging by appearance), Viktor Krum was still in school, and sitting _just across the Great Hall_, and the Tournament would be starting any day now, since the schools had arrived and no one would want to delay unnecessarily. They would probably discover how the champions were chosen tonight, and, in Fred and George's case, they could begin to work out how to get around whatever security that Dumbledore wanted to set up.

Ron gaped across the hall, still unable to comprehend such a concentration of pure famousness in a single area. Hermione reached over and smacked him over the back of the head, before his eyes could light on Fleur again. Ron had gotten better over the years, but he seemed to be especially susceptible to her Veela Allure, or maybe he just had less innate resistance. Harry, who had built up the ability to resist Fleur's allure even as she was developing it, couldn't really understand where Ron was coming from.

"Harry!" Gabbi tugged frantically on his sleeve to get his attention. He loved the sight of her, sitting here with him at the Gryffindor table, ready for a school year of them allowed to be together every waking hour. He had understood that him and Gabbi would be married for as long as he had been old enough. Right after Apolline and Jean-Paul had adopted him, Harry had been consistently told that, if they wanted to be, him and little Gabbi would be married just like Maman and Papa.

He grinned at her. "Yeah?"

"Your Headmaster's beard is enormous!" Harry laughed. Dumbledore's beard, long enough to be tucked into the belt of his (usually very colourful) robes, was certainly one of the longest that Harry had ever seen.

"He reminded me of Gandalf when I first saw him," Harry said. "But then I realized that Gandalf would _never_ be caught dead in those robes." Gabbi, a veritable French beauty, was very into fashion even at such a young age. She caught a look at the Headmaster and gagged at the star-spangled, rich purple robes that Dumbledore wore. He had undoubtedly been forced into something even that conservative by McGonagall, who was looking at him disgustedly out of the corner of her eye.

Their conversation, simple though it was, was hushed with everyone else as Dumbledore stood to address the crowd.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and - most particularly - guests," said Dumbledore, beaming around at the foreign students. "I have great pleasure in welcoming you all to Hogwarts. I hope and trust that your stay here will be both comfortable and enjoyable."

One of the Beauxbatons girls still clutching a muffler around her head gave what was unmistakably a derisive laugh.

"No one's making you stay!" Hermione whispered, bristling at her.

"The tournament will be officially opened at the end of the feast," said Dumbledore. "I now invite you all to eat, drink, and make yourselves at home!"

He sat down, and Harry saw Karkaroff lean forward at once and engage him in conversation.

The plates in front of them filled with food as usual. The house-elves in the kitchen seemed to have pulled out all the stops; there was a greater variety of dishes in front of them than Harry had ever seen, including several that were definitely foreign.

"What's _that_?" said Ron, pointing at a large dish of some sort of shellfish stew that stood beside a large steak-and-kidney pudding.

"Bouillabaisse," said Hermione.

"Bless you," said Ron.

"It's _French_," said Hermione, "I had it on holiday summer before last. It's very nice."

"It's fine," Gabbi agreed. "Well, Fleur likes it, anyway. I'm not that big of a fan, and I don't thing Harry likes it very much, either," she shot a look at Harry, who nodded in agreement.

"I'll take your word for it," said Ron, helping himself to black pudding.

The Great Hall seemed somehow much more crowded than usual, even though they were hardly crowded; the tables in the Great Hall had a much larger capacity than usually filled them. Perhaps it was because their differently coloured uniforms stood out so clearly against the black of the Hogwarts' robes. Now that they had removed their furs, the Durmstrang students were revealed to be wearing robes of a deep blood red.

Hagrid sidled into the Hall through a door behind the staff table twenty minutes after the start of the feast. He slid into his seat at the end and waved at Harry, Ron, and Hermione with a very heavily bandaged hand.

"Skrewts doing all right, Hagrid?" Harry called.

"Thrivin'," Hagrid called back happily.

"Yeah, I'll just bet they are," said Ron quietly. "Looks like they've finally found a food they like, doesn't it? Hagrid's fingers."

At that moment, a voice said, "Excuse me, are you wanting the bouillabaisse? Are you behaving yourself, Gabrielle?" Fleur added sternly. Harry picked up the dish from in front of Ron and offered it to Hermione for a moment, to ensure that she was done with it before handing the dish to his sister.

"You know that neither Gabbi or I like that stuff, Fleur," Harry said cheerfully. "Help yourself. Hey, sit down for a minute, would you? And why didn't any of you think to bring cloaks? I warned you about England being much colder. You've only really been here during the summer."

Fleur took the offered seat and dished some of the bouillabaisse onto Harry's unused bread plate and helped herself to his dessert spoon, flushing delicately (Veela didn't blush unattractively, so it just served to make her even more heart-stoppingly gorgeous). "I warned them, but I forgot myself. They must have, too. Merci, for thinking of me." As one of the only Beauxbatons students in the hall that wasn't freezing, Fleur must have been something of an envy to her classmates, though her sky-blue silk robes were covered entirely by Harry's black cloak with its Gryffindor crest.

"Did your friends ask where you got that?"

"They assume that I used my allure to seduce some hapless schoolboy out of his cloak," Fleur said. "They do not actually like me much, so they wouldn't really believe me if I told them otherwise." Harry knew that Fleur had it difficult, with her beauty and Veela allure. The other girls were jealous of her, the boys couldn't get too close to her without drooling all over her. It was why she had clung to Percy when she had met him years ago—a boy that was too straightlaced to show his reaction to her allure. And after he had spent enough time with her, he too had built up an immunity to Fleur's unrestrained power.

Soon enough, Fleur returned to the Ravenclaw table and left Harry to introduce Gabbi to his classmates. Soon enough, though the feast finished up and Dumbledore addressed the Hall over again.

Once the golden plates had been wiped clean, Dumbledore stood up again. A pleasant sort of tension seemed to fill the Hall now. Harry felt a slight thrill of excitement, wondering what was coming. Several seats down from them, Fred and George were leaning forward, staring at Dumbledore with great concentration.

"The moment has come," said Dumbledore, smiling around at the sea of upturned faces. "The Triwizard Tournament is about to start. I would like to say a few words of explanation before we bring in the casket —"

"The what?" Harry muttered.

Ron shrugged.

"- just to clarify the procedure that we will be following this year. But first, let me introduce, for those who do not know them, Mr. Bartemius Crouch, Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation" - there was a smattering of polite applause - "and Mr. Ludo Bagman, Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports."

There was a much louder round of applause for Bagman than for Crouch, perhaps because of his fame as a Beater, or simply because he looked so much more likable.

He acknowledged it with a jovial wave of his hand. Bartemius Crouch did not smile or wave when his name was announced. Remembering him in his neat suit at the Quidditch World Cup, Harry thought he looked strange in wizard's robes. His toothbrush moustache and severe parting looked very odd next to Dumbledore's long white hair and beard.

"Mr. Bagman and Mr. Crouch have worked tirelessly over the last few months on the arrangements for the Triwizard Tournament," Dumbledore continued, "and they will be joining myself, Professor Karkaroff, and Madame Maxime on the panel that will judge the champions' efforts."

At the mention of the word "champions," the attentiveness of the listening students seemed to sharpen.

Perhaps Dumbledore had noticed their sudden stillness, for he smiled as he said, "The casket, then, if you please, Mr. Filch."

Filch, who had been lurking unnoticed in a far corner of the Hall, now approached Dumbledore carrying a great wooden chest encrusted with jewels. It looked extremely old. A murmur of excited interest rose from the watching students; Dennis Creevey actually stood on his chair to see it properly, but, being so tiny, his head hardly rose above anyone else's.

"The instructions for the tasks the champions will face this year have already been examined by Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bagman," said Dumbledore as Filch placed the chest carefully on the table before him, "and they have made the necessary arrangements for each challenge. There will be three tasks, spaced throughout the school year, and they will test the champions in many different ways … their magical prowess - their daring - their powers of deduction - and, of course, their ability to cope with danger."

At this last word, the Hall was filled with a silence so absolute that nobody seemed to be breathing.

"As you know, three champions compete in the tournament," Dumbledore went on calmly, "one from each of the participating schools. They will be marked on how well they perform each of the Tournament tasks and the champion with the highest total after task three will win the Triwizard Cup. The champions will be chosen by an impartial selector: the Goblet of Fire."

Dumbledore now took out his wand and tapped three times upon the top of the casket. The lid creaked slowly open. Dumbledore reached inside it and pulled out a large, roughly hewn wooden cup. It would have been entirely unremarkable had it not been full to the brim with dancing blue-white flames. Dumbledore closed the casket and placed the goblet carefully on top of it, where it would be clearly visible to everyone in the Hall.

"Anybody wishing to submit themselves as champion must write their name and school clearly upon a slip of parchment and drop it into the goblet," said Dumbledore. "Aspiring champions have twenty-four hours in which to put their names forward. Tomorrow night, Halloween, the goblet will return the names of the three it has judged most worthy to represent their schools. The goblet will be placed in the entrance hall tonight, where it will be freely accessible to all those wishing to compete.

"To ensure that no underage student yields to temptation," said Dumbledore, "I will be drawing an Age Line around the Goblet of Fire once it has been placed in the entrance hall. Nobody under the age of seventeen will be able to cross this line.

"Finally, I wish to impress upon any of you wishing to compete that this tournament is not to be entered into lightly. Once a champion has been selected by the Goblet of Fire, he or she is obliged to see the tournament through to the end. The placing of your name in the goblet constitutes a binding, magical contract. There can be no change of heart once you have become a champion. Please be very sure, therefore, that you are wholeheartedly prepared to play before you drop your name into the goblet. Now, I think it is time for bed. Good night to you all."

"An Age Line!" Fred Weasley said, his eyes glinting, as they all made their way across the Hall to the doors into the entrance hall. "Well, that should be fooled by an Aging Potion, shouldn't it? And once your name's in that goblet, you're laughing - it can't tell whether you're seventeen or not!"

"But I don't think anyone under seventeen will stand a chance," said Hermione, "we just haven't learned enough …"

"Speak for yourself," said George shortly. "You'll try and get in, won't you, Harry?"

Harry thought briefly of Dumbledore's insistence that nobody under seventeen should submit their name, but then the wonderful picture of himself winning the Triwizard Tournament filled his mind again … He wondered how angry Dumbledore would be if someone younger than seventeen did find a way to get over the Age Line. Then he considered the constant danger that was his life, and immediately discarded the idea. The fact remained that this tournament was dangerous, and, as nice as finally earning some glory for something that he had actually done for once sounded, Harry didn't want or need to risk his life again, especially not for something so stupid. Knowing that Fleur was planning on entering the Tournament didn't help his nerves, and he resolved to enlist Gabbi to try to talk her out of entering all of tomorrow, though, Fleur could be very stubborn when she wanted to. He doubted that they would make a dent in her resolve.

"Where is he?" said Ron, who wasn't listening to a word of this conversation, but looking through the crowd to see what had become of Krum. "Dumbledore didn't say where the Durmstrang people are sleeping, did he?"

But this query was answered almost instantly; they were level with the Slytherin table now, and Karkaroff had just bustled up to his students.

"Back to the ship, then," he was saying. "Viktor, how are you feeling? Did you eat enough? Should I send for some mulled wine from the kitchens?"

Harry saw Krum shake his head as he pulled his furs back on.

"Professor, I vood like some vine," said one of the other Durmstrang boys hopefully.

"I wasn't offering it to you, Poliakoff," snapped Karkaroff, his warmly paternal air vanishing in an instant. "I notice you have dribbled food all down the front of your robes again, disgusting boy -"

Karkaroff turned and led his students toward the doors, reaching them at exactly the same moment as Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Gabbi. Harry stopped to let him walk through first.

"Thank you," said Karkaroff carelessly, glancing at him.

And then Karkaroff froze.

He turned his head back to Harry and stared at him as though he couldn't believe his eyes. Behind their headmaster, the students from Durmstrang came to a halt too. Karkaroff's eyes moved slowly up Harry's face and fixed upon his scar. Harry, sensing that this man was dangerous, shoved Gabbi behind him and out of the possible range of Karkaroff's malevolent notice. He needn't have bothered—the Eastern European Headmaster was clearly too focused on Harry's scar to notice anything or anyone else.

The Durmstrang students were staring curiously at Harry too. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw comprehension dawn on a few of their faces. The boy with food all down his front nudged the girl next to him and pointed openly at Harry's forehead.

"Yeah, that's Harry Potter," said a growling voice from behind them.

Professor Karkaroff spun around. Mad-Eye Moody was standing there, leaning heavily on his staff, his magical eye glaring unblinkingly at the Durmstrang headmaster.

The colour drained from Karkaroff's face as Harry watched. A terrible look of mingled fury and fear came over him.

"You!" he said, staring at Moody as though unsure he was really seeing him.

"Me," said Moody grimly. "And unless you've got anything to say to Potter, Karkaroff, you might want to move. You're blocking the doorway."

It was true; half the students in the Hall were now waiting behind them, looking over one another's shoulders to see what was causing the holdup.

Without another word, Professor Karkaroff swept his students away with him. Moody watched him until he was out of sight, his magical eye fixed upon his back, a look of intense dislike upon his mutilated face.

Harry draped one arm around Gabbi and led her without thinking about it to the stairs in the entrance hall before Professor McGonagall interrupted him.

"Mr. Potter, as wonderful as it is that you seem to be taking the lead in International Cooperation and are making friends, but you must let Miss—" she looked to Gabbi.

"Gabrielle Delacour," Gabbi helped her.

"Delacour return to the carriage that her classmates are staying in—good heavens, child, are you part Veela?" Ron snorted, Hermione managed to suppress her reaction, and Harry simply stared at his Professor as if he'd never seen her before. And as it was, he had really only seen her shocked in one situation: when he, Ron, and Hermione had blasted into her office in first year to tell her that the Philosopher's Stone was in danger.

Gabbi flushed slightly. "Yes." She raised her chin, thinking that this was the beginning of the persecution that Fleur had suffered through all of her life. "My grandmother. And there is no such thing as _part_ Veela. All females born of a Veela line will be _all_ Veela, until the blood has diluted enough that they are not."

McGonagall stared at her for a moment before responding. "Your English is very good, Miss Delacour. I can barely hear an accent. You are a tad bit young for your allure to be affecting Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley, are you not?"

"I haven't grown into my allure yet," Gabbi said. Harry could tell that she was starting to get irritated with the line of questioning.

"Of course not."

"And Harry's immune to allure, anyway," she added, before Harry could shut her up. "Fleur's has never affected him. Overexposure has made him immune. But Ron always drools at her. It's funny."

This time, Ron flushed, and he didn't do it in an attractive, Veela-ish manner—everything from his ears to his neck and everything in between turned a deep, lobster red. It was a very prominent Weasley blush, and it matched his hair well. Not that Ron would have been comforted by this knowledge had anyone told him that. So his blush and hair didn't clash—that was hardly something to be proud of.

"Please, Professor," Harry broke in. "It's still a couple of hours till curfew, can I show Gabbi the Gryffindor common room and then walk her back out the carriage?"

"I asked Madame Maxime earlier," Gabbi added, throwing in a pair of absolutely perfect, conniving puppy dog eyes. "She said it was alright, as long as I was back by ten."

McGonagall looked stern for a moment before she relented. "Well, all right. You can show your new friend the common room, but take care not to be too late. You have classes tomorrow, and I'm sure that she does as well. And if I catch you out past curfew—_again _—I will not hesitate to take points, and you will be in detention with Mr. Filch so fast that your head spins. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Professor," Harry said, thanking his lucky stars that she hadn't questioned how he had had a chance to build up an immunity to Veela allure, or how they knew that Ron wasn't immune to Fleur's. That would suggest that he spent a lot of time with them, after all. And he wanted Dumbledore to remain unaware of his living conditions for as long as possible.

**A/N: There, done. Speaking of, I'm sending out an official poll that I'll put on my profile, whether you'd prefer shorter updates (like this one) more often, or longer ones (I was going to cover the next day and the drawing of the champions' names too, but decided to get this posted) with more time in between. If you recognize some areas, that's because I kept finding myself getting away from the scene and had to copy and edit some chunks of text that are directly from GOF. These do not belong to me, either, BTW. I'm sure you saw the author's note that was in the previous chapter. I'm sorry for tricking you with two chapters, but the note was getting so long that I separated them. I **_**am**_** posting them at the same time for that reason—I didn't want people to try to flay me with a wet noodle for doing the author's note thing. **

**~I Took the One Less Travelled**


	4. The Champions Plus Harry

**A/N: I'm in such a good mood about this story that I started the next chapter as soon as I finished posting the last one! Yippee! Here we go- Champions are chosen in this chapter, and I suppose that it isn't going to be a secret that Harry's going to get entered under a fourth school, though having his older sister's support and help every step of the way is only going to help him. After all, there's nothing in the rules that says that the champions can't help each other, and Fleur will care more about getting her little brother out of this alive than winning. Oh, and one of my reviewers recognized my penname. It totally made my day. ihaveasandbox: yes, it comes from a poem- The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. Also, to whichever reviewer told me that Ginny is clearly a rabid fangirl who fawns over the Boy-Who-Lived—no. Just no. So, she had a bit of crush on Harry when she was younger. I am going to mention that a bit in this chapter. It will be dealt with. But Ginny is not a rabid fangirl who wants to marry the BWL. And I will not characterize her that way. If you want Weasley bashing, get it somewhere else. And about Ron—well, I already addressed Ron. Go to Chapter 2 if Ron concerns you, and read that. And as for 'Laziness and Manners'- Harry's just as lazy as Ron, most of the time, and usually can be equally rude. They're teenage boys, not saints. It's hypocritical of you to hold fictional characters to a higher standard than you would people in real life, and you would not expect real eleven year old boys to behave maturely. And I could argue that Harry's probably more immature in this than he was in canon, since he was abused, and probably grew up way before his time in canon, which is untrue here. **

**Also- I thank jediprankster, for pointing out the rather large plot hole that the Delacours would have had no legal right to create a betrothal contract. I am very grateful for your willing suspension of disbelief, and though there's nothing that I can do about it now, I hope that I succeed in entertaining you anyway, and I will attempt to avoid such plot holes in the future.**

**Disclaimer: I make no profit on the mention of trademarked materials. All recognizable characters, settings, plot points, and quotes belong solely to J.K. Rowling.**

The next day was Saturday. That gave Harry and Gabbi the chance to latch themselves onto Fleur early in the morning—before Madame Maxime had the chance to take her eligible students to put their names in the Goblet of Fire—and proceed to follow her around _all freaking day_, begging her not to put her name in. All that they succeeded in doing was ultimately annoying her out of her mind. She finally managed to evade them to stalk into the entrance hall mid afternoon. Harry and Gabbi halted at the edge of the age line, not wanting to know what Dumbledore's idea of security would do to them if they tried to cross it. Fleur walked like a caged animal as she stalked past the line drawn on the floor and, glaring at them triumphantly, tossed a piece of parchment that bore her name and school into the flames. All of the spectators around the goblet watched as the flames flared, indicating that Fleur's name had been accepted. Then, not saying a word, she stalked back out again, glaring daggers at her younger siblings.

"Wow, mate. If looks could kill. What did you do, anyway?"

"Tried to talk her out of entering," Harry answered Ron glumly. "She's my sister! I'm not about to let her get killed!"

"Harry!"

"Sorry, Gab. Didn't think. I'm sure that if she gets chosen, she'll do fine. I just don't want to think about her in danger."

Just then, Fred and George Weasley came into the hall. Smirking, since this promised very good entertainment, Harry pulled Gabbi back from the age line (who knew how it would react when Fred and George tried to cross it, and Harry didn't want either of them to get caught in the crossfire), Harry didn't need to tell her to watch. Gabbi had spent enough time with Fred and George (or, as she liked to call them, Gred and Forge) over the years to know that their mere presence created havoc worth watching.

Sure enough, after bragging about ageing themselves a few months until their seventeenth birthday, Fred and George crossed the age line and stood there for a moment with baited breath before cheering. And then they were simultaneously catapulted out, this time with the addition of Dumbledore-length beards.

Dumbledore himself came down the stairs and nattered on about ageing potions before sending the twins to the hospital wing, to join the others who had attempted the same thing. "Mr. Potter," Dumbledore called. "Perhaps we could speak in my office? I have some concerns that I need to discuss with you."

Harry snorted. So the old man had finally figured it out, huh? A bit slow on the uptake, but it wasn't like he had any legal right to meddle in guardianship affairs, especially when the people that he would be fighting with were French citizens. The Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot had no jurisdiction in France, and the Supreme Mugwump (what the hell kind of title was that, anyway? Who named these things) of the International Confederation of Wizards was really more of a figurehead position. Harry knew all about the UN from his studies on muggle politics, which he had taken as a child so that he could understand enough to get by in the muggle world. The International Confederation of Wizards had no more real power than the UN, and couldn't interfere here. He was probably planning to use his 'trusted grandfather' persona to convince Harry that he only wanted the best for him.

"Of course, Professor. Hermione, could you hang out with Gabbi till I get back? She doesn't know Hogwarts very well, and I don't want her to get lost."

"Sure, Harry," Hermione agreed. She budged over to make room for Gabbi to sit on the bleachers next to her, sending her very heavy and full book bag (though not as much as last year. Honestly, who bends the very fabric of reality to help a thirteen year old girl attend some extra classes? Why not just rearrange the schedule, or, better yet, tell her that she had to pick?) to the floor in front of her with a thump before going back to the book in her lap.

Secure that Gabbi was safe for the moment, Harry followed Dumbledore to the gargoyle that guarded his office. He announced the password to be, "cockroach clusters," and the staircase began moving with a grinding sound. Muggle escalators were so much more efficient than this.

The Headmaster led the way into his office before offering Harry the chair in front of his desk. "Now, curious as I was about your familiarity with a few of the Beauxbatons students, I looked into where you could have possibly met them and Olympe, only to discover that you were adopted by the Delacour family several years ago." Dumbledore gave him a disappointed look.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes, so?" Knowing why he was here didn't help him keep his temper.

"Harry, I have made several comments over the years that made you believe that I still assumed that you were living with your muggle family. Why did you allow me to continue believing this?"

Harry clenched his fists. He had had enough. "Those people are _not_ my family. Apolline and Jean-Paul are my parents, Fleur is my sister. Gabbi will be my wife someday."

"If you had told me, I would have been able to work to rectify the situation," Dumbledore insisted, having not even registered what Harry had _just_ said.

"What situation?" He clenched his teeth in effort to keep his temper, knowing exactly what 'rectify the situation' was code for. Dumbledore was actually going to fight to send him back to the Dursleys after all of these years.

"Harry, my boy, do you not remember when we had that discussion in the hospital wing after your little adventure with the Philosopher's Stone?" Dumbledore asked jovially, completely oblivious to Harry's rising temper. "When I told you of your mother's sacrifice? She left you very powerful magical protection, protection that I was able to weave into blood based wards. However, those wards, and that protection, would only be active if you resided under the roof of a blood relative of your mother's. Petunia Dursley, as your mother's last living relative, is where that protection runs. It is imperative that you remain there for your own protection."

"Really?" Strangely, Harry's temper calmed. He could argue with logic when it was necessary. "Do these wards do anything to protect me from _internal_ threats?"

"Whatever do you mean, dear boy?"

"From them. The Dursleys. Do the wards protect me from them? Do the wards provide a child with love, attention, fitting clothing and food?"

"No, dear boy! Of course not. That would be up to your aunt and her husband to provide that. Do you not understand anything about how warding works?"

"No, I understand warding. I just wanted to make sure that you did. So the wards provide nothing but basic physical protection from all external attacks, is that right?"

"Yes," Dumbledore confirmed with a smile.

"So there were no contingencies in place to protect an orphaned infant from his petty and self-centered muggle relatives?"

"What are you going on about, Harry?"

"Well, Headmaster, I'm questioning your wisdom in leaving a defenceless infant in the hands of people who would starve, abuse, neglect, and lock a child in the cupboard under the stairs, of course."

"Where are you getting these fantasies, Harry?"

"Apolline said that when they finally went to the Dursleys' house to pick me up, they found me bruised, neglected and malnourished, in the cupboard under the stairs and dressed in worn out hand-me-downs that were four sizes too big for me. When the Dursleys complained about the cost to keep me, Jean-Paul went to Gringotts and discovered that they were receiving a healthy stipend from my vaults to keep up for my care."

"That's ridiculous—"

"They have pictures and the healer's report," Harry interrupted. "_And_, judging by what I know of my aunt, the abuse would have only gotten worse as time wore on."

"Harry," Dumbledore interjected. "I realize that the situation may not be the most ideal, but the protection offered by the blood wards is too important to pass up. I'm afraid that, come the summer holidays, I am going to have to insist that you return to the care of your aunt and uncle and recharge the wards that are obviously severely neglected."

"Really? If the wards are so neglected, why haven't you noticed it before?"

"Due in part to our state of peace, and to my blind trust that you were returning there, I haven't been monitoring them as closely as I admittedly should have. Now Harry, about the marriage contract, can't you see that your so called family has only taken you in because they wanted the notoriety that would come from raising the boy-who-lived? And having him betrothed to their daughter?"

"Really? If they wanted notoriety, why haven't you heard about it before now? Why wasn't it all over the papers? And why is there an out clause in the marriage contract?"

"That is enough, Harry," Dumbledore said sternly. Harry knew that that meant that the arguments were getting to him. "I'm afraid that I must insist on dissolving the contract, and thereby every legal right that the Delacour family has to your guardianship, and returning you to your aunt and uncle."

"And as the Headmaster of my school, _I_, and my family, must insist that you explain what legal right that you have to either decide my activities outside of school or to dictate my guardianship."

"Harry," Dumbledore chided gently. "As the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, I have final say on all guardianship cases that come through England."

"Really? That's fabulous for you, but the Delacours are _French_, and you have no power over guardianship cases that go through France."

"As your magical guardian, I _do _have the right to decide."

"That's also fabulous," Harry snapped acidly. "But you gave over the right to be my magical guardian the moment you signed control over to the Dursleys, who had the perfect right to then sign control over to someone else."

Dumbledore, having just realized that he had lost, blanched. "I'm afraid that I have to ask you to dissolve the contract, then, Harry. The Delacour girl is simply not suitable—the British Lady Potter cannot be _French_. We would be more than happy to sign another contract in its' place, if that's what you want. How about Ginny Weasley?"

"_What_?" Harry was shocked. Where on earth had that come from? Ginny didn't even like him anymore, hadn't since the summer before second year, when he had cornered her in her room, having gotten tired of her shrieking and knocking over dishes when he entered a room, and given her a verbal slap to the face to make her quit it. He couldn't stand people who worshipped him for something that he didn't even remember. "Ginny? Now you're trying to marry me off to Ginny?"

"Only if you are favourable to this, of course," Dumbledore said hurriedly. "But if you really insist on a contract, then there are things that can be done—"

"A _contract_? I don't want a contract, I want _Gabbi_. And this conversation is over," Harry added, finally regaining his bearings. He didn't want to hear anymore about the Dursleys and marriage contracts with Ginny Weasley. This was _not_ school related, and the only reason that Dumbledore was allowed to approach him privately for a discussion was if he had something school related to talk about. Since this had absolutely nothing to do with him, Harry was perfectly justified in walking out, and he had no reason to be obligated to stay, or to bow to his Headmaster's authority.

"Harry! Please, whatever you want," Dumbledore actually sounded rather pathetic, when it came down to it. It was almost sad, how much stock he wanted to put in these blood ward things—Harry would have felt sorry for him, if he wasn't so incredibly brassed off. But _nobody_ took Gabbi away from him, and the fact that Dumbledore is trying to do it 'for his own good' had made it even worse.

Harry opened the door to the office, and then closed it behind him with a slam on the way out. Petty, really, to imagine all of the damage that he'd done to the door, the potential cracks in the wood and be pleased about the potential inconvenience to Dumbledore. But even when he was a kid, he wasn't very good about his temper.

As he was in the process of storming past the gargoyle, he almost knocked over Snape.

"Potter!"

"Sorry, Professor!"

"Ten points from Gryffindor for not watching where you're going!"

Harry winced inwardly. Just what he needed, really, to make his day complete. His sister threw her name into the Goblet, and was potentially going to die, Dumbledore was trying to dissolve his betrothal to Gabbi, and now Snape was taking points for no good reason. Bastard.

And on top of all that, Harry had five minutes to climb all the way to the Gryffindor tower to put his book bag away, and then get back to the hall for the beginning of the feast. He had originally been intending to take Gabbi to meet Hagrid today, since she hadn't seen him since he had picked Harry up before first year to take him to Diagon Alley, but Dumbledore had kept him too long.

Racing back down the stairs, Harry managed to encounter Hagrid in the entrance hall, and stopped to stare, completely not seeing Ron, Hermione and Gabbi behind him (evidently when Harry hadn't come back, Ron and Hermione had decided to continue with the plan to see Hagrid without him). Instead of his usual thick, heavy coat covered in pockets, Hagrid was dressed in his best (horrible) hairy brown suit with a banana-yellow waistcoat. His hair was slicked back with greasy gel (or perhaps gel-ly grease), as if he had tried to put it up behind the nape of his neck like Ron's older brother Bill, who Harry had met at the Quidditch World Cup that summer, only to discover that he had too much hair.

"Hi, Hagrid," Harry finally managed to greet him, with a somewhat fixed smile.

"Arry!" Harry closed his eyes and very quickly counted to ten in order to avoid shooting his brain-to-mouth filter off and asking what on earth Hagrid had done to himself. Clearly, he had a little something for Madame Maxime, and he had convinced himself that _this_ would be the way into her heart. For a woman that was so fashion conscientious, Harry doubted it.

"Shall we go to the feast?" Anything so that he didn't have to _look_ at that suit. Ron and Hermione both nodded frantically. Gabbi appeared to be partially comatose with the knowledge that a clothing garment that hideous existed. Harry draped an arm over her shoulder and guided her over to where Neville, Dean, Seamus, and Lavender were sitting. Ginny was just down the table with some other girls from her year, and he could see the twins a bit in the other direction, sitting with Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet and Lee Jordan.

"Hey, Nev," Harry greeted the round faced boy upon sitting. "Did I introduce you to Gabbi yesterday? She's my betrothed."

This clearly wasn't news to any of his yearmates—clearly, the news that Harry Potter was trapped in a betrothal contract had already made its' rounds around the school since yesterday. Sometimes Harry wondered if there were experiments to determine whether the Hogwarts rumor mill's efficiency was due to its small student population, the fact that Hogwarts was a boarding school, or just plain abnormal.

Harry winced and looked away as Hagrid took his seat. He was a guy, and not a gay one (not that there was anything wrong with that), so it wasn't true that he cared that much for clothes. But that suit really was horrible.

The feast was magnificent, but no one really seemed to care. Between everyone within view with the exception of Hermione and the Weasleys, staring at Harry and Gabbi incredulously and the underlying chatter about who the champion for Hogwarts would be (the Hufflepuffs were clearly supporting Cedric Diggory, and the Gryffindors Angelina Johnson), there were plenty of more important things to worry about than food.

At long last, the golden plates returned to their original spotless state; there was a sharp upswing in the level of noise within the Hall, which died away almost instantly as Dumbledore got to his feet. On either side of him, Professor Karkaroff and Madame Maxime looked as tense and expectant as anyone. Ludo Bagman was beaming and winking at various students. Mr. Crouch, however, looked quite uninterested, almost bored.

"Well, the goblet is almost ready to make its decision," said Dumbledore. "I estimate that it requires one more minute. Now, when the champions' names are called, I would ask them please to come up to the top of the Hall, walk along the staff table, and go through into the next chamber" - he indicated the door behind the staff table - "where they will be receiving their first instructions."

He took out his wand and gave a great sweeping wave with it; at once, all the candles except those inside the carved pumpkins were extinguished, plunging them into a state of semidarkness.

The Goblet of Fire now shone more brightly than anything in the whole Hall, the sparkling bright, bluey-whiteness of the flames almost painful on the eyes. Everyone watched, waiting … a few people kept checking their watches…

"Any second," Lee Jordan whispered from down the table, though loud enough for everyone around him to hear.

The flames inside the goblet turned suddenly red again. Sparks began to fly from it. Next moment, a tongue of flame shot into the air, a charred piece of parchment fluttered out of it - the whole room gasped.

Dumbledore caught the piece of parchment and held it at arm's length, so that he could read it by the light of the flames, which had turned back to blue-white.

"The champion for Durmstrang," he read, in a strong, clear voice, "will be Viktor Krum."

"No surprises there!" yelled Ron as a storm of applause and cheering swept the Hall. Harry saw Viktor Krum rise from the Slytherin table and slouch up toward Dumbledore; he turned right, walked along the staff table, and disappeared through the door into the next chamber.

"Bravo, Viktor!" boomed Karkaroff, so loudly that everyone could hear him, even over all the applause. "Knew you had it in you!"

The clapping and chatting died down. Now everyone's attention was focused again on the goblet, which, seconds later, turned red once more. A second piece of parchment shot out of it, propelled by the flames.

"The champion for Beauxbatons," said Dumbledore, "is Fleur Delacour!"

Harry uttered a very bad word under his breath. Hermione smacked him for it. Gabbi's eyes went wide with both horror and pride for her sister. Fleur got up from her seat and headed towards the door on the other side of the staff table, but before she went in, she turned around and stuck her tongue out at him.

"Oh look, they're all disappointed," Hermione said over the noise, nodding toward the remainder of the Beauxbatons party. "Disappointed" was a bit of an understatement, Harry thought. Two of the girls who had not been selected had dissolved into tears and were sobbing with their heads on their arms.

And the Goblet of Fire turned red once more; sparks showered out of it; the tongue of flame shot high into the air, and from its tip Dumbledore pulled the third piece of parchment.

"The Hogwarts champion," he called, "is Cedric Diggory!"

"No!" said Ron loudly, but nobody heard him except Harry; the uproar from the next table was too great. Every single Hufflepuff had jumped to his or her feet, screaming and stamping, as Cedric made his way past them, grinning broadly, and headed off toward the chamber behind the teachers' table. Indeed, the applause for Cedric went on so long that it was some time before Dumbledore could make himself heard again.

"Excellent!" Dumbledore called happily as at last the tumult died down. "Well, we now have our three champions. I am sure I can count upon all of you, including the remaining students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, to give your champions every ounce of support you can muster. By cheering your champion on, you will contribute in a very real —"

But Dumbledore suddenly stopped speaking, and it was apparent to everybody what had distracted him.

The fire in the goblet had just turned red again. Sparks were flying out of it. A long flame shot suddenly into the air, and borne upon it was another piece of parchment.

Automatically, it seemed, Dumbledore reached out a long hand and seized the parchment. He held it out and stared at the name written upon it. There was a long pause, during which Dumbledore stared at the slip in his hands, and everyone in the room stared at Dumbledore. And then Dumbledore cleared his throat and read out - _"Harry Potter."_

Harry sat there, aware that every head in the Great Hall had turned to look at him. He was stunned. He felt numb. He was surely dreaming. He had not heard correctly. Next to him, Gabbi shrieked as if in agony and clung to his arm. But she didn't need to worry—this was just a misunderstanding, after all. He hadn't put his name in. He hadn't wanted to compete. Surely there was some sort of contingency plan for people whose names were put into the Goblet against their will.

There was no applause. A buzzing, as though of angry bees, was starting to fill the Hall; some students were standing up to get a better look at Harry as he sat, frozen, in his seat.

Up at the top table, Professor McGonagall had got to her feet and swept past Ludo Bagman and Professor Karkaroff to whisper urgently to Professor Dumbledore, who bent his ear toward her, frowning slightly.

Harry turned to Ron and Hermione; beyond them, he saw the long Gryffindor table all watching him, open mouthed.

"I didn't put my name in," Harry said blankly. "You know I didn't."

Both of them stared just as blankly back.

At the top table, Professor Dumbledore had straightened up, nodding to Professor McGonagall.

"Harry Potter!" he called again. "Harry! Up here, if you please!"

"Go on," Hermione whispered, giving Harry a slight push.

Harry got to his feet, trod on the hem of his robes, and stumbled slightly. Gabbi still hadn't released the death grip that she had on his arm, and who said that he had to face the firing squad alone anyway? Why couldn't she come with him?

Since he couldn't walk with the way that she was holding him, Harry slid her hand down to clamp onto his own instead. Everyone seemed to be too much in shock to question anything. The path up to the head table seemed longer than it ever had before. Finally, he reached the dais that the staff table was on. Dumbledore wordlessly nodded towards the door, expression inscrutable.

Inside was a comfortable room with several couches and a fireplace. Viktor Krum was leaning against the wall, and Cedric and Fleur had each claimed the end of one of the couches.

"Potter?"

"Harry?" The French and English champions asked at the same time. And then: "Gabbi?"

"Who's the kid?"

This seemed to be all that was needed for Gabbi to throw herself across the room and at her sister, sobbing. She hadn't neglected to let go of Harry's hand, and he knew from experience that Veela had some grip on them. In order to avoid getting his arm pulled off, he willingly followed his betrothed into the group hug.

"Gabrielle?" Fleur asked in bewilderment, rubbing her sister's back. "What's wrong, sweetie?"

"Harry'snamecameoutofthegobletoffire!" Gabbi wailed, reaching out to grab Harry's arm again and haul him into the impromptu group hug.

Fleur stopped dead. "What?" She locked eyes with Harry.

"My name came out," he muttered. Cedric let out an unpleasant sound, and Krum grunted.

Fleur's reaction was instantaneous. She went pale as a ghost, released Gabbi, and grabbed Harry around the back of the neck to hold in a rib-crushing hug. If she had been any other hot seventeen year old girl (like, not his sister), Harry probably would have enjoyed the opportunity to get close to second base. As it was, he barely managed to yank out her grip before her rather ample and impressive bosom smothered him to death.

The door came swinging open, admitting Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, Karkaroff, Moody and Snape, Madame Maxime, and Crouch and Bagman. Bagman was at the front. "Miraculous!" he was saying. "Astounding! I've no idea how it was done, but ladies and gentlemen, somehow, we present the _fourth_ Triwizard champion!"

Fleur gasped, Gabbi shrieked in horror, and Harry simply stood still.

"Harry!" Dumbledore demanded. "_Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire_?"

"No!"

"Did you ask an older student to do it for you?"

"No!" Harry was already sick of this line of questioning, and he had only been asked two questions.

"Harry!"

Everyone in the room turned to look a Fleur. "Harry, hold up your wand and repeat after me," she paused until Harry had nodded and held up his wand.

"Ego Fides."

"Ego Fides," Harry repeated. Knowing what she was getting at, he continued without her help. "I swear on the blood of my birth parents and on their graves, and with my magic that I did not knowingly or willingly put my name in the Goblet of Fire, aid someone who intended to, or ask another to do it for me. Ego Fides." A white light flashed from the tip of his wand. "Lumos."

Harry extinguished the light after sufficiently proving that he still had his magic. "Now that's resolved, I don't have to compete, right?" Dumbledore shook his head.

"Harry..."

"The Goblet of Fire constitutes a binding magical contract," Crouch explained. "You must compete, or the Goblet itself will punish you."

"What kind of punishment?"

"At best, you will lose your magic," Crouch answered. "At worst—death." Gabbi shrieked again and grabbed at Harry.

"What is that child doing in here?" Karkaroff demanded. Harry shot him a very nasty look, echoed clearly by Fleur.

"She is my sister," Fleur answered sharply. "And Harry's betrothed. She has every right to be here, more so than about half the people in this room."

Harry arched into the conversation (rant) then, in order to calm his sister down. "Honestly, Fleur, the only person who really doesn't have a legitimate reason to be here is Snape." He received a nasty glare from the greasy-haired potions master. As Snape opened his mouth to protest and probably insult Harry by comparing him to a father that he had no memory of, Harry hurried on. "Crouch and Bagman are the organizers for the Tournament, Madame Maxime—"

"'_Arry_," Madame Maxime scolded gently.

"Sorry, _Aunt Olympe_, Professor Dumbledore and Professor Karkaroff are the Headmasters of the schools, Professor McGonagall is my Head of House, and Professor Moody is an ex-Auror."

"I think that we need to consider the thought that someone put Potter's name into the Goblet because they wanted to kill him," Moody said into the silence. Fleur gasped in horror and trapped his face in her boobs again. Cedric was watching with a kind of perverse fascination, and Krum had pushed off the wall."

"He's—" Cedric began. "He's too young."

Fleur jumped on this like a lifeline. _"Oui_. E iz just a leetle boy!" Like normally happened when she was stressed, Fleur's English morphed back into a French accented mess.

"Oi!" Harry, who had the opposite problem of sounding too British for his own good, given that he was technically _French,_ snapped indignantly. His indignant expression probably would have had more general effect if it hadn't been so obviously practiced in the mirror. "If I wanted to, _which I don't_, I could totally handle whatever you people have put together for tasks in this stupid tournament. I've faced Voldemort twice, fought a Basilisk and a cursed diary, a transformed werewolf, a murderer who betrayed my birth parents, Acromantulas, about a hundred dementors at the same time, a fraud with a penchant for wiping people's memories, a Devil's Snare, nasty looking fire and poison," he said triumphantly, before catching sight of Fleur's completely shocked face, and remembered that he had only provided his family with the _extremely abridged _version of his school years for a reason. The last thing that he wanted was to be pulled out of Hogwarts and away from his friends.

"I mean, all those visits to the hospital wing were completely freak Quidditch accidents," he attempted to cover lamely. He realized that everyone in the room was staring at him in shock. Fleur yanked him back into the hug that he had just managed to escape from, murmuring soothing sounds that he supposed were French due to her accent, but in truth neither sounded French nor English.

"Harry?" Gabbi asked him softly. He wrench partially away from Fleur to look at her. "Did you really almost die?"

He closed his eyes. "Yes, Gabbi. But I didn't die. I'm still here. And I have to compete?"

Crouch nodded. "Yes. It is the only way."

"Well, I can do it. I won't take stupid risks, Gabbi, I promise. And I don't want to win or get points. I just want to get out of this alive. Besides, you think Fleur can do it, don't you? Why not me?"

Gabbi stared at him for a moment before nodding.

"Excellent," Bagman said. "Now that that is sorted out, Barty, I believe that you wanted to tell them about the first task?"

"Yes," Crouch agreed. "Now, the first task is designed to test your daring—"

"Hold on, Barty," Dumbledore said. "Alastor, if you would go to the Goblet and check what could have been done to confuse such a powerful magical artifact—after all, this is the _Tri_wizard Tournament, and the Goblet shouldn't have been confused into drawing four names."

Moody stumped out of the room and Crouch continued. "The first task is designed to test your daring, your ability to react in the face of danger. That is why we will not be telling you what it is. It will be on the twenty-first of November, and feel free to prepare however you would choose until that time. However, be advised that seeking aid from your teachers is strictly forbidden."

Fleur and Cedric were nodding along and Krum grunted. Harry was still too shocked by the whole turn of events to really react.

"Now, Harry, Cedric. I will contact you if and when Alastor discovers how the Goblet was tampered with. For now, I believe that it is best that you return to your dormitories. Gryffindor and Hufflepuff are probably waiting to celebrate with you, after all, and I would hate to deprive them of an excellent opportunity to make a great deal of mess and noise.

Harry grimaced at the thought of returning to the Gryffindor Common Room, but realized that if he didn't, it would be worse tomorrow.

During their walk through the entrance hall, Cedric asked how Harry felt, and Harry assured him that it would be fine. They finally split off to go in opposite directions, where Harry was greeted at his Common Room portrait hole with a roar of epic proportions.

**A/N: There's chapter 2, done. So, Harry was chosen for the Triwizard Tournament, Fleur tried to smother him with her bosom, and Gabbi's worried. Everyone else is too stunned to comment. I always thought that there was some kind of oath that someone could swear, and it **_**is**_** well used in fanfic. I wanted Harry to confirm that he had had nothing to do with it. Next up, we get Ron's reaction (which will be the same as canon) and Harry's reaction to Ron (which will not—not giving away any more than that). Remember to tell me what you think.**

**~ITookTheOneLessTravelled**


	5. Harry and Family?

**A/N: Here's chapter 3! Yay. Something that I wanted to address—accents and languages. Just so that it's clear, I am not going to label or italicize it when they speak another language. Use your common sense. Since French is their mother tongue, Harry, Fleur and Gabbi will speak French when talking to each other, unless they are speaking so that others can overhear their conversation. If they are in private, it will be French. And as for why Madame Maxime has a French accent and Fleur and Gabbi don't, it's because I reason that when they adopted Harry and decided that he would go to Hogwarts, they immediately began teaching all three children to speak English as well as French. It has made them nearly fluent in both languages. This is even moreso for Harry, since he has spent most of the last three years at an entirely English speaking school, in an English speaking environment. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything familiar. All mentions of the Harry Potter Franchise belong to J.K. Rowling, and I make no profit off of my work. **

**Now, on with the story. **

"Fleur!" Harry hissed, tossing a pebble to the window of the room that she shared with Gabbi, poking his head out from under the invisibility cloak. "Gabbi!"

"Harry! What is it?" Fleur demanded, sticking her head out the window. "It is three in the morning! Go back to bed."

Harry knew that he looked dejected, knew that he looked a bit like a lost puppy. Fleur softened. "What happened?"

"Ron doesn't believe that I didn't put my name in. He accused me of stealing all of the glory." Fleur swore under her breath.

"Come around to the door. I'll open it for you." Trying to ignore the hole in his chest that his best friend—his _brother_ had torn into it, Harry allowed himself a triumphant smirk before his expression slid back into being dejected as he traced the path around the massive powder blue carriage and stopping at the side door, which opened for him just after he got there.

He had never been so happy to see his sister, standing there framed by the carriage. She looked tired and disgruntled, her hair was a mess and she was wearing a dressing gown. "Come in then. You can stay with us." She led him through the halls of the carriage to a small room on one end, with two twin beds, and a hurricane of female clothing and products strewn about the floor. The beds had been pushed together—his family had always been a bit touchy-feely, and after the night that they had all had, Fleur and Gabbi had probably pushed the beds together so that they could heap together and cuddle. Harry gratefully cast his invisibility cloak to the side and joined the sleeping Gabbi on the bed. Fleur curled up next to him, and, despite the fact that he had been trying to get to sleep in Gryffindor Tower for hours, was lulled into unconsciousness as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Harry woke before his sister and Gabbi and extracted himself from between them, dressed and went up the lawn into the castle, severely not looking forward to breakfast. He was glad that he had thought to bring some clean clothes with him when he had gone to the Beaxbatons carriage the night before, knowing that he wouldn't have wanted to return to Gryffindor Tower in the morning. He sighed, resigning himself to having to suffer through the crowds in order to grab some food when he came face to face with Hermione, exiting the Great Hall.

"Hello," she said, holding up a stack of toast, which she was carrying in a napkin. "I brought you this … want to go for a walk?"

"Good idea," said Harry gratefully.

They crossed the entrance hall quickly and were soon striding across the lawn toward the lake, where the Durmstrang ship was moored, reflected blackly in the water. It was a chilly morning, and they kept moving, munching their toast, as Harry told Hermione exactly what had happened after he had left the Gryffindor table the night before.

To his immense relief, Hermione accepted his story without question. She also looked relieved that he had found someone to comfort him, and that he hadn't had a sleepless night fretting over his fight with Ron in Gryffindor Tower.

"Well, of course I knew you hadn't entered yourself," she said when he'd finished telling her about the scene in the chamber off the Hall. "The look on your face when Dumbledore read out your name! But the question is, who did put it in? Because Moody's right, Harry … I don't think any student could have done it … they'd never be able to fool the Goblet, or get over Dumbledore's -"

"Have you seen Ron?" Harry interrupted.

Hermione hesitated.

"Erm… yes… he was at breakfast," she said.

"Does he still think I entered myself?"

"Well… no, I don't think so… not _really,_" said Hermione awkwardly.

"What's that supposed to mean, 'not _really_'?"

"Oh Harry, isn't it obvious?" Hermione said despairingly. "He's jealous!"

"_Jealous_?" Harry said incredulously. "Jealous of what? He wants to make a prat of himself in front of the whole school, does he? _And_, I have to compete against Fleur. She was always better at magic than me."

"Look," said Hermione patiently, "it's always you who gets all the attention, you know it is. I know it's not your fault," she added quickly, seeing Harry open his mouth furiously. "I know you don't ask for it … but - well - you know, Ron's got all those brothers to compete against at home, and you're his best friend, and you're really famous - he's always shunted to one side whenever people see you, and he puts up with it, and he never mentions it, but I suppose this is just one time too many… And what is this mess about Fleur? She's three years older than you, of course she's better at magic. You have a huge disadvantage in this mess, but I think that's the least of your worries."

"Great," said Harry bitterly, addressing the Ron issue rather than his obvious inadequacy problems. "Really great. Tell him from me I'll swap any time he wants. Tell him from me he's welcome to it … people gawping at my forehead everywhere I go …"

"I'm not telling him anything," Hermione said shortly. "Tell him yourself. It's the only way to sort this out."

"I'm not running around after him trying to make him grow up!" Harry said, so loudly that several owls in a nearby tree took flight in alarm. "Maybe he'll believe I'm not enjoying myself once I've got my neck broken or -"

"That's not funny," said Hermione quietly. "That's not funny at all." She looked extremely anxious. "Harry, I've been thinking - you know what we've got to do, don't you? Straight away, the moment we get back to the castle?"

"Yeah, give Ron a good kick up the -"

"Write to Sirius. I know that Fleur probably wrote to your parents last night, but Sirius wasn't staying in France, was he? You've got to tell him what's happened. He asked you to keep him posted on everything that's going on at Hogwarts … it's almost as if he expected something like this to happen. I brought some parchment and a quill out with me -"

"Come off it," said Harry, looking around to check that they couldn't be overheard, but the grounds were quite deserted. "He came back to the country just because my scar twinged. He'll probably come bursting right into the castle if I tell him someone's entered me in the Triwizard Tournament -"

"_He'd want you to tell him_," said Hermione sternly. "He's going to find out anyway."

"How?"

"Harry, this isn't going to be kept quiet," said Hermione, very seriously. "This Tournament's famous, and you're famous. I'll be really surprised if there isn't anything in the Daily Prophet about you competing … You're already in half the books about You-Know-Who, you know … and Sirius would rather hear it from you, I know he would."

"Okay, okay, I'll write to him," said Harry, throwing his last piece of toast into the lake. They both stood and watched it floating there for a moment, before a large tentacle rose out of the water and scooped it beneath the surface.

Then they returned to the castle.

"Whose owl am I going to use?" Harry said as they climbed the stairs. "He told me not to use Hedwig again."

"Ask Ron if you can borrow -"

"I'm not asking Ron for anything," Harry said flatly.

"Fine," said Hermione. "Ask Fleur if you can borrow Pierre, then. Or use one of the school owls. Just send it."

"Pierre's probably halfway across the channel, delivering that letter to my parents," Harry muttered irritably. School owl it was, then.

They went up to the Owlery. Hermione gave Harry a piece of parchment, a quill, and a bottle of ink, then strolled around the long lines of perches, looking at all the different owls, while Harry sat down against a wall and wrote his letter.

_Sirius_

_Hermione thought that you'd like to know that my name came out of the Goblet, and I apparently have no choice but to compete. Moody thinks that someone put my name there to kill me. I agree. Fleur's also in the tournament, she'll protect me. Don't come back to England, they've still got the dementors chasing you because Fudge is an idiot. I even took a magical oath that I hadn't put my name in myself. _

_Love, Harry_

_Sirius,_

Hermione scribbled on the bottom of the parchment.

_Ignore him, he needs you. No one knows about Snuffles, and Fleur is his competitor. She can't be around to hold his hand all the time._

"Hey!"

Hermione ignored him and continued writing.

_You know how Harry is. He could be dying, and he'd pretend it's nothing. Just don't get yourself killed. _

_Love, Hermione_

Harry snatched the parchment from her, but Hermione snatched it back. "I'm going to send it anyway, you know. Might as well be now, cut down on the owls going in and out of his hiding place. You need him, Harry. Trust Sirius to keep himself safe, and swallow your pride. Yes, you have Fleur and Gabbi here, but they aren't adults. You need adults right now. You need parents, and yours are too busy with stuff in France, especially Monsieur Delacour, to just up and leave. Sirius has no obligations that he'd be neglecting. Nothing but his obligation to his godson—you. He'd want to be here. And you making him feel useless won't help anything."

Harry bowed his head in acquiescence and let Hermione take the scroll and tie it onto the leg of a brown school owl. Hedwig came down from the rafters hooting, but glared balefully at him when she saw him and Hermione using another owl. Harry quickly took up the quill and parchment again to write a letter to his parents, just giving them an update. Since he was sure that they had already been updated by Fleur, it was really to give Hedwig something to do. She could be very tetchy when she thought that he had been cheating on her (ie: paying attention to another owl), and the last thing that he wanted was for his ears to be pecked off.

The fact that it was Sunday meant that he could effectively avoid his fellow students (especially Ron) for the entire day. That night in the Common Room, faced with the prospect of going up the stairs to the tower and going to bed in the same room as Ron, Dean and Seamus (Neville wasn't so bad—he clearly believed Harry when he said that he hadn't put his name in) simply didn't appeal at all. Instead, he went up the stairs and pulled his invisibility cloak out again, and grabbed some clean clothes and his pyjamas. Hermione stared at him when he came back down the stairs.

"Can I come?"

Harry stopped for a moment. Hermione was his sister too, after all. There really wasn't any reason why she shouldn't. There wasn't any reason why he couldn't bring her out to sleep in the Beaxbatons carriage—as long as they weren't actually _out_ after curfew.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Run upstairs and get some stuff, make sure to bring a change of clothes for tomorrow morning so that you won't have to come back in here. Fleur and Gabbi have more hair products than you've probably ever wanted to see in your life—" here he paused to shiver—"So they'll have everything else that you need."

Hermione looked at him in a pitying way for a moment before rushing up the girls' stairs and coming back down with her book bag, empty of books and stuffed full of clothing (well, maybe one book for a little 'light' before bed reading).

Harry offered her the loose fringe of his invisibility cloak and wrapped an arm around her waist so that they could be close without bumping into each other. Even if it was before curfew this time, he knew that Snape wouldn't hesitate to attempt to make his life miserable if he ran into them, and Malfoy was going to be even more of an idiot—after Harry Potter of all people, his archrival in all things, had been deemed worthy of competing in a tournament that Malfoy himself had been unable to even _enter_ (though, honestly, if anyone would have had the money and simplicity to bribe an older student to enter his name into the Goblet for him, it was Malfoy. So it was entirely possible that he _had_ entered his name, and the fact that Potter had thought of entering under a different school so that he would be sure to be chosen had to grate. As well as the fact that he had lost out to a Hufflepuff), Malfoy had to be in an especially bad mood concerning Harry lately. And Harry didn't want to have to deal with him. Ever. At all.

As Harry and Hermione snuck out into the night (since it was almost winter, it got dark at about six in the evening, so of course it was dark now, at 8:30), they made sure to be as silent as possible. Harry was sure that if anyone found out that he had been ditching his bed in the Tower in order to take a female friend outside to sleep in the quarters of another school, and share a bed with two other girls, they would not have been best pleased with him.

"Fleur," he hissed again, sliding the invisibility cloak off. Since it wasn't actually curfew yet, it didn't really matter if anyone saw him. And the quarters of the other schools weren't off limits, as long as someone invited them inside. This time, perhaps since she was awake and probably expecting him, it only took one tossed pebble to get his sister to stick her head out the window.

"Come around, Harry. Hermione."

Grateful for her unending acceptance of him, Harry led Hermione around the back of the carriage to the side door, and waited for Fleur to open it. This time she was still dressed, still immaculately prepared, and there were students wandering the large corridors around the rooms. Some of the French students gave Fleur and her Hogwarts companions odd looks, but let them pass without comment.

This time, not tired and distraught as he had been last night, Harry noticed that there was a brass nameplate on the door that read:

_Head Girl: Fleur Delacour_

_Feel free to visit anytime during classes or free time during the day to ask questions or voice concerns, and if necessary, Miss Delacour will bring them to the Headmistress._

And the underneath, in smaller print,

_Gabrielle Delacour_

Fleur propped the door open and let them in. Gabbi was sprawled across the beds, which were still pushed together from last night, diligently scribing some essay or another with a capped ink bottle next to her on the sheets, using a hardbacked book as a writing surface and a French First Year Transfiguration text open in front of her.

Hermione immediately settled herself at Gabbi's unused desk without a word and pulled out some of the homework that she had brought. Harry pulled up an extra chair to the side of the desk to join her, and Fleur went across the room to her own desk to get back to her schoolwork. They stayed in companionable silence for awhile, quills scratching and pages turning. It was so much easier to concentrate here than in the common room, where the weight of angered stares and the quite-audible-Harry-related-whispers hung on his back.

Ron had been sitting across the common room to work on his work with Dean and Seamus, and Harry hadn't been able to help his anger from showing at Ron's stupidity.

A couple of hours later, after homework had been completed and recreational reading had been commenced, Fleur yawned and suggested bed. The girls shoved Harry into the bathroom with his pyjamas, and informed him that he was not to come out until they had told him that it was okay. Harry took the opportunity to brush his teeth and go to the bathroom before they kicked him back into the room and took over the bathroom themselves. Girls could be so demanding. Harry settled himself onto the bed, glad that Fleur had thought to perform a sticking charm on the two mattresses so that nobody fell between the crack.

Hermione was the first out of the bathroom, but Harry's platonic feelings prevented him from feeling anything inappropriate towards her, despite her wearing nothing but a faded, overlarge men's Beatles tee-shirt. It fell easily to almost mid-thigh on her, the letters and images peeling off, and had probably (almost certainly) had belonged to her father at some point. The dates that were scrolling on the back made it clear that this was a concert tour tee-shirt.

Gabbi showed up next, dressed in a lace camisole tank top and a pair of Harry's old pyjama pants (not because she didn't have anything of her own to wear, but because she had always said that it made her feel better when she was away from him). Though they were several years old, they were also several inches too long for her and the drawstring was pulled to clumping around her thin, undeveloped hips.

Fleur was last, and dressed in a tiny little silk nightgown, that, had she not been his sister, Harry would have viewed as blatantly sexual, and probably would have had a very embarrassing and unfortunate problem that would have destroyed his ability to sleep. As it was, Harry would only get aroused by imagining a grown up Gabbi in a similar nightgown.

As it was, Gabbi snuggled up on one side of him, using his shoulder as a pillow, and Hermione took the other. Fleur curled up next to Gabbi and clicked off the light. Harry drifted to sleep with no trouble, stroking his betrothed's hair and curled with his family.

Despite the nice warmth that he had felt last night, Harry had had to face reality come morning. Fleur's alarm clock had gone off at seven, and she had stumbled out of the bed and to the shower. One shower between four people was hardly difficult to share, but it still needed some logistical planning. As soon as Fleur had finished running water, Gabbi had gone in to take her shower while Fleur was fixing her hair and makeup. Hermione had followed suit, and Harry had gone last. There wasn't really much immodesty, though most of the teachers probably wouldn't have approved—the shower doors had been fogged up so that none of the girls in the bathroom, parked in front of the mirror could see anything private about Harry, and they had all dressed in the bathroom and were now lined up with towels wrapped around hair.

Fleur and Gabbi were currently attempting to tame Hermione's bushy brown mass, something that they had relentlessly tried to talk her into over the summer, but she had always refused. Obviously now Hermione had relented. Harry knew that Hermione was prone to the occasional fit of vanity, and imagining the looks on the faces of Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown if Fleur and Gabbi succeeded in even partially taming her hair.

Harry shut off the stream of water and stuck his hand out beside the shower door to grab a towel and efficiently dry himself off inside the shower, before tucking it around his waist and emerging. The girls barely spared him a glance as he stepped into the outer room and dressed quickly.

But then there was a knock on the door. Fleur came barrelling out of the bathroom, towel finally removed and wet hair hanging down her back and shoulders, getting her robes wet. She gestured sharply for him to get away from the view of the door.

"Oui?"

"Fleur, one of the Hogwarts champions is missing. They say that he's your brother, so we thought you should know."

Fleur groaned loudly. "You didn't tell anyone where you were going, you little brat?" She demanded over her shoulder. Blushing, Harry slid in view of the door.

"I'm not missing. If you're going up to the castle, can you tell them that I'm fine?"

The nameless Beauxbatons student (probably a third year, she looked a little younger than him, but older than Gabbi), stared at him in shock. It was one thing to be within the presence of the Beauxbatons Head Girl and champion, who she saw every day. But to actually find the Hogwarts champion (the unpredicted fourth champion) that everyone had accused of cheating in that Head Girl's bedroom was a bit much.

"Yes, of course." The fact that he was _Harry Potter_ of all people probably didn't help, but even as she stared in undisguised shock and hero worship at his forehead, Harry appreciated that she hadn't stuttered. Then he reflected that it was very sad that he appreciated that she hadn't stuttered.

"Rebecca," Fleur attempted, opening the door further. "Please come inside, and we will explain the situation to you."

Still staring at Harry like a wary animal, she slipped inside the room and moved to cower in the corner. Okay, maybe he wasn't very charitable towards her, but he really was sick of this.

Gabbi came out of the bathroom, hair blow-dried and sat on the bed with her book bag and piles of books, sorting through what she wanted to take. Since everyone that understood English/French/Whatever language that they spoke at Durmstrang (Harry had not bothered to find out—he knew that he didn't speak it, and had no interest in attending Durmstrang classes anyway) was being offered the opportunity to attend some classes of the other schools, and see how the education was there. Gabbi had jumped on the opportunity to attend classes with all of Harry's professors, partially because she wanted to see if Snape really was that bad, and laugh at Trelawney, and partially because she had heard tons about McGonagall and Flitwick from him and Hermione (and Sirius and Remus, to a lesser extent) over the summer, and wanted to experience those classes.

As such, she had been sorting through his old first year texts, all of which were still viable except for the defence one, and deciding what she wanted to do today. Hermione had joined her, laying on her stomach length-wise on the bed, to give advice and inform on the schedule.

"Rebecca," Fleur began. "This is my adopted brother, Harry Potter and his best friend Hermione Granger. Harry has been going through some... trouble recently, with his dorm mates, and didn't want to sleep in his dormitory."

She stared some more. "Oh."

"So it would be greatly appreciated if you would simply state that you had seen him, or perhaps that he was out flying on the Quidditch Pitch in the morning, okay?"

"Oh, yes, of course," she agreed in rapid fire French, still looking bashful.

"Good." Fleur said. "Is that all that you needed to tell me?"

"Yes, Fleur."

"Okay, run up to the castle and say that you saw him, now. Thank you," she added to the girl's fleeing back. "Well, that was easy."

Harry snorted, and looked over at Gabbi and Hermione. The Delacour sisters had indeed managed to tame the frizziness of Hermione's hair down to a minimum, leaving her with soft brunette curls that framed her face. And her eyes looked a bit different, too.

"Come on," Hermione said, helping Gabbi finish shoving books into her bag. "It's time for breakfast—if we don't go soon, we'll be late."

Most of the Beauxbatons students had left already. Perhaps since they only had to share a bathroom between two, instead of four, or maybe because they hadn't had any reason to stall. But as it was, when Harry arrived in the entrance hall, he balked at the thought of breakfast with everyone. The Gryffindors would cheer for him, and the Hufflepuffs (who were mad at him for stealing Cedric's glory) would probably boo.

"Ignore the peanut gallery, Harry," Hermione encouraged. "Go on." She shoved him through the door and followed close behind. Harry had to admit that running the gauntlet was so much easier, knowing that his family was on his side. He was greeted with glares and gossip from all quarters. Ignoring them, he settled into breakfast with Hermione next to him and Fleur and Gabbi sitting across from him. The general shock of the Beauxbatons champion sitting with him—his sister _forgiving him_ for stealing his glory cause complete silence for a moment, and then the whispers grew louder. Harry ignored them in favour of shovelling food like Ro-

He stopped. Thinking about Ron was painful right now. He had potions first. Dreading, it Harry finished off his breakfast and went down to the dungeons with Hermione, wanting to arrive ahead of the rest of the students. He hoped that Gabbi was doing all right, auditing the first year Hufflepuff/Slytherin Transfiguration class. He knew that none of her classmates had been eager to start so quickly, so unless anyone from Durmstrang had started, she was probably all alone in there. He hoped that the others were nice to her—no. If they weren't nice to her, they would answer to him. That was that.

"Look, Potty!"

"Very creative, Malfoy," Harry drawled, turning to look at the person that _thought _that he was Harry's arch-nemesis, but in reality was nothing more than a pest. "I'm impressed. Potter. Potty. First class insult you've got going there—you must have thought for _hours_ to come up with that one!"

Malfoy fumed. Since he was so pale, he flushed red very easily, almost as much so as the Weasleys. Harry took a sadistic kind of pleasure in the way that Malfoy looked.

Malfoy was wearing a green-inked badge that read _Support Cedric Diggory, the Real Hogwarts Champion_. Harry snorted. If that was supposed to rile him up, Malfoy clearly didn't understand him at all.

"Is that supposed to bug me? I swore on my magic that I hadn't put my name in the cup. In fact, give me one of those and I'll wear it. Maybe that will get the point across." He backed up to survey all of the fourth year Gryffindors and Slytherins gathered in the dungeon corridor. "In fact, let everyone know that I said that. That I _told you_ to support Cedric over me. I don't very well need people rooting for me, since I'm not trying to win. Just... you know, not die."

Looking bewildered, Malfoy thrust a badge at Harry. "But look what else it does," he boasted. He pressed down on his badge, and the green letters blurred into a purple _Potter Stinks_.

"So I won't wear it like that," Harry snapped, pinning his new badge to his robes, hoping that, if nothing else, it would shock people into shutting up when he could hear them gossiping.

"Want one, Mudblood? Careful not to touch my hand, I've just washed it." Hermione glared at the offered badge, and every Gryffindor within hearing vicinity snarled. Ron did more than that—he shot a spell at Malfoy, who shot a spell of his own. The spells collided off one another, one hitting Goyle in the face and the other glancing into Hermione, who shrieked and clapped a hand to her now-rapidly growing front teeth.

Then Snape arrived. "_What _is going on here?"

Surprisingly enough, Lavender Brown jumped to his defence. "Malfoy's spreading derogatory slurs about Harry, who did nothing to deserve it, and then called Hermione a mudblood and Ron hexed him for it, and Malfoy hexed him back, and the spells hit each other and rebounded into Hermione and Goyle," she said rapidly.

"Detention for fighting, Weasley. Hospital wing, Goyle," Snape added.

"But what about Hermione?"

Snape looked coldly at Harry. "I see no difference. Ten points from Gryffindor for disrespecting a Professor, Potter. "

Hermione shrieked again and bolted off down the corridor, trying to hide her rapidly growing teeth, which had already descended past her chin. Harry glared at Snape and followed her.

When he finally caught up with his best friend, she was halfway to the hospital wing, and her teeth were halfway down her neck. Harry walked with her silently, sensing that she didn't want to talk, but not wanting to abandon his currently only friend while she was in need.

**The end... For now. Duh Duh **_**Duh**_**. No, seriously. The updates may be slower since we're getting into finals now, but I promise that I will do my level best. Next chapter: The Weighing of the Wands, and more Harry-Family interaction. I have now completely diverted from canon—since my Harry is different, I've decided that his actions are going to be different in the face of adversity, as you can see with the whole 'wearing the badge' thing. That is all for now. Oh, and just because I wanted to clarify, despite the title, his name is not actually Harry Delacour Potter. He didn't change his name. Nor will he ever think of himself like that or refer to himself that way. I just wanted to get across the differences from canon in the title, and I was lacking inspiration. I **_**am**_** trying to think up a better one. If you have any ideas, please mention them. **

**~ITookTheOneLessTravelled**


	6. The Weighing of the Wands

**A/N: Okay, new experience. I have just had a reviewer inform me that I am delusional for having a different opinion than them... Whatever. I have no more to say on the matter. Also, for the record, I did not say that there isn't a perfectly compelling canonical argument for why Dumbledore is evil (because there is, I have seen it many times, and it can make a lot of sense, if you lay it out right), just that I don't feel the need to twist the facts like that. A lot of those arguments are assumptions and hearsay. Also, please remember that this is ultimately JKR's plot, and JKR's characters, and she clearly didn't intend for Dumbledore to be evil. There are some unexplainable plot holes, yes. But since Harry Potter is like the Grand Series of Plot Holes, I am going to try my best to remain on what JKR has written, and believable interpretation of Dumbledore, since if she had meant for him to be evil, she would have revealed it. Also, issues with JKR's methods of ending the war aside, I actually um... like heart the epilogue—Harry gets to live happily ever after with his family, and R/Hr stayed together, Harry's godson is dating Bill and Fleur's daughter. I totally love it, deep in that warm, fuzzy place in my heart...**

**Also, to said reviewer, even if they probably won't read it: I never said that you weren't entitled to your own opinion, just that this is mine. I also believe that I said, in a roundabout way: **_**This is how it is in my story, take it or leave it**_**. **

**If you disagree with me, please do contact me. I'm always up for an intelligent debate, and we can PM back and forth about it... but it should be a debate. I will not react well to being called delusional for a differing opinion. I am one of those people who cannot tolerate stupidity. If you see a hole in my logic, point it out to me **_**without childish insults**_**. Respect is important. Respect for others' opinions is important, even if you disagree with them. Thank you.**

**Now, about the actual story: yes, Gabbi attending the classes at Hogwarts **_**does**_** have a point. I always figured that, since the other schools didn't bring their entire student bodies, they couldn't do this. However, since I needed to change this so that Gabbi could be present from the beginning, I thought that it would only make perfect sense to allow the students to sample the classes that the other schools offered. But my real point to even mentioning it is this:**

_**Snape**_**. Snape's behaviour is reprehensible. It doesn't matter that he loved Lily, or that he was bullied by James. Blatant favouritism, bias, severe bullying towards students, child endangerment (what do you call allowing Malfoy to toss potentially dangerous ingredients into someone else's cauldron?) and excessively abusive behaviour are things that everyone who has ever been taught by him experiences. Then we get to Harry. Harry is hated, and attacked with unearned vitriol and bias because of his physical resemblance to a man that he has no memory of. And like a typical teenage boy, and probably like most of the Hogwarts students over the years (since Snape was never fired for his behaviour, you have to assume that it never occurred to anyone to complain), Harry does not actually inform anyone of how bad he is, which leads people to assume that he just isn't a great teacher, and can be excessively grumpy at times. But Gabbi will go in, and be treated horribly simply because of who she is to Harry, and she will mention it to Fleur, and Fleur will realize that it isn't acceptable and do something about it. I am going to be dealing with Snape. Just have patience. **

**And Harry accepts Snape being an asshole because he's learned to pick his battles, and standing up to Snape in the past has just ended in lost points and detentions. **

**And as for why he is upset about Ron—just because he has a loving family and support system doesn't mean that Ron still isn't one of his best friends. Just because you have other friends doesn't mean that you aren't upset when you're fighting with one of them, does it?**

**As for Dumbledore: He **_**does**_** have a blind spot regarding Harry, and he kind of figured out that the wards were falling and freaked. He will be better later. You really only saw one glimpse of him there. If you want to see how I personally view Dumbledore (it's kind of hard to put into words), read Portrait of a Dead Man. Of course, that Dumbledore is reflecting after death. This is going encompass his journey **_**to**_** the version of Dumbledore that I portray in Portrait of a Dead Man. **

**And when I said that I had diverted from canon, I probably said that too drastically. I meant that I will no longer be copying large portions of text from GOF in order to get conversations right, and events may start getting out of order. The tasks, the Yule Ball, all of those things will remain the same. I **_**could**_** start changing the tasks around, like some people do, but I wanted to remain mostly GOF compliant. I will **_**completely**_** divert from canon around mid book-five, when Harry starts pranking the hell out of Umbridge because he can, and everything will get derailed very quickly after that. **

Sitting in the hospital wing while Hermione had her teeth resized was a novel experience. Madam Pomfrey had fixed Goyle up and sent him on his way in about thirty seconds before turning to him and Hermione. Since he had arrived in front of Hermione and he was taller and broader than her, Madam Pomfrey hadn't seen his friend at first. Instead, she had greeted him with a sigh.

"Oh, it's you again, is it? What have you done now?"

"Nothing, Madam Pomfrey, its Hermione." He had stepped out of the way and revealed his friend, who was doing her best to cover her collar-length front teeth, and failing miserably. Madam Pomfrey had hit her with a spell to stop the growing, directed her to the nearest bed to wait, and gone bustling into her office to come out with a small hand mirror.

"Tell me when to stop, dear," she instructed Hermione, completely ignoring Harry. But right now, Harry was _sure_ that Hermione's teeth were smaller than they used to be. She finally stopped it, and Harry eyed her suspiciously. Hermione smiled with her new teeth sheepishly and mouthed _opportunity_.

Harry cast his eyes at the ceiling. Growing up with a couple of beautiful French girls had enabled him to understand that girls cared about their appearances and things like teeth, but for the life of him, he had never understood why.

Right at that moment, they were interrupted by Colin Creevey bursting into the hospital wing. "Harry, the Tournament people need you for some ceremony. Wands or something, they said," he insisted excitably. "I went to Snape's class, and he said that you were gone, but Neville said that you had probably gone with Hermione to the hospital wing."

"Colin, I can't—" Harry glanced back at Hermione.

"It's all right, I'm done. Now, how about I come with you?" Hermione offered, knowing exactly what Harry was groping at so candidly. He didn't want to do this alone. He knew that whatever this thing was would probably have reporters and Fleur may be too busy to hang out with him. Harry smiled at her gratefully.

"Lead on, Colin," Harry said. He and Hermione followed the younger Gryffindor out of the hospital wing and to an empty classroom on the fourth floor, where he left them at the door with a smile for Harry, who made a distinctive effort to smile back. Then he pushed open the door.

Bagman was standing to one side, Mr. Ollivander (the wand maker) was sitting behind a table, and the other three champions were milling around the room. Fleur greeted him with a smile before going back to glaring at the blonde woman standing in the corner with Bagman.

"Granger?" Cedric asked incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

"Moral support," Hermione said cheerily. "And Harry was too chickenshit to come alone."

"Hold on, Potter, is that one of those badges—" Cedric cut himself off to stare at the _Support Cedric Diggory, the Real Hogwarts Champion_ badge that Harry had adorning his breast. "I'm sorry about those. I tried to talk them out of it, but—why are you wearing one?"

"To get a point across," Harry said at the same time as Hermione blurted,

"Because he's too much of a martyr for his own good."

"Because he is an idiot," Fleur said over them. Cedric stared, having not noticed the aloof French Champion making her way over to join the conversation. "Why are you not in class, Hermione? I doubt that you got permission to skip it from your professor."

"I was in the hospital wing," Hermione explained. "I got hit in the face with a teeth growing curse, and Harry followed me after Snape was a huge bastard about it."

"Hermione!" Harry said in a mock horrified tone. "Language!"

"Ha-bloody-ha. I refuse to respect that man for behaving that way! It is completely unprofessional, not to mention dangerous. What if it had been something more serious! I can think of at least three potentially lethal curses that would have similar effects. And I'm here for moral support, because he wasn't sure that you would be here, or that you two would get to talk," she added to Fleur

"Sister to sister," Fleur agreed fondly. Harry rolled his eyes.

"I hate it when they gang up on me like that."

"Did she say that you think of Granger as a sister?"

"Yes, why?"

"Because I should probably pull my money from that betting pool and put it in on her and Weasley instead," Cedric answered. "Since you're betrothed and everything."

Harry snorted. "You had money on me and Hermione? And there's a pool on her and Ron?"

"There's also one on the Golden Trio _really_ being a trio when you're older."

"Ew," Harry protested, cringing. Really, he loved Ron like a brother, but no. Just no. In fact, anytime that he tried to picture a world where that possibility could be seriously considered, his brain just _shut down_. "No. But I definitely have to get in on this one on her and Ron, though I have to say that the way that he's going now, it'll be seventh year before he clues in. And there's no point in having a betting pool on me and Gabbi," he added. "We're kind of already together. If you have money on me getting with anyone else, you might want to pull that, too."

"There's another pool on you and Malfoy, you and Ginny Weasley, you and just Ron Weasley, and one on you, Granger and the girl Weasley having a permanent triad."

Harry retched. Not that there was anything wrong with homosexuality, or anything, but the thought of him and Malfoy was just repulsive, and Ron nearly equally so. The part of him that was male would have liked the triad with Hermione and Ginny, but that was hardly what he really wanted. He had Gabbi.

"Hold on, do you people bet on everyone's love lives, or just ours?"

"Everyone interesting," Cedric said diffidently. "I think that I qualify as interesting now, because I heard rumours about a pool on me and Cho Chang."

Harry thought about the pretty Ravenclaw Seeker. "Nice. You like her?"

"Yes. I heard there was going to be a formal ball as part of the Tournament. I was going to ask her to go."

"Makes sense, really," Harry reflected. "They've never required formal dress robes as part of the uniform before. How is it that you know about the pool?"

"They're less discrete, since they know that if you knew about it, you would kick up a huge fuss. If I tried to do the same, I would be a hypocrite since I've been in on those pools before."

"Does _Cho_ know?"

"No. So don't tell her, Potter," Cedric ordered. "I want to surprise her. How well do you know Delacour? The rumours floating around here the past few days have made my head spin."

"She's my sister," Harry answered. "Like Hermione. Hermione's an only child, one time she said that she had always wanted a sibling. So I told her that as long as Fleur agreed to share, she could have me. Of course, Fleur did agree, since Hermione wrote to her. They agreed to be pen pals after that, and _then_, Fleur said that if they were both my sisters, then they would be sisters, too."

Cedric snorted. "That sounds kind of sappy, actually. So no freaky Veela three-ways?"

"No. Definite no. How'd you know that she's a Veela?"

"I can feel that allure of hers from across the room. We assume that the younger one, your betrothed, is a Veela as well, but she wouldn't have allure yet, would she?"

"No. Hold on, people actually thought that I was having a freaky Veela three-way with Fleur and Gabbi?"

"Yep."

Harry choked. Not that Fleur wasn't gorgeous, and all, but she was still his sister. And he seemed to be choking a lot in this conversation, between Fleur and the apparent betting pools being run about his love life. And from the way that Cedric was smirking (a Hufflepuff, smirking? It just didn't sit right) he was thoroughly enjoying this little game of 'shock the innocent fourteen year old'. Harry was just lucky that Fleur didn't join in—she had access to a lot of really interesting blackmail about him, and could make him blush very easily when she set her mind to it.

"Harry, Harry," Harry and Cedric were rudely interrupted by the woman that had been talking to Bagman in the corner. "My name is Rita Skeeter, I work for the _Prophet_," she said, latching roughly onto his arm and swinging a purse that looked like it was made of crocodile skin. "Do you mind saying a few words? Everyone is curious about our youngest champion," she added with a smile.

Harry had heard of Rita Skeeter, of course. His father had mentioned her several times over the years, when talking about his dealings with the British Ministry. Apparently, she was in the habit of somehow eavesdropping on private conversations and publishing them in the newspaper. She regularly published slanderous outright lies and insinuations that had no basis in fact, and Jean-Paul had once threatened to sue her for libel. Honestly, if Lockhart hadn't lost his memory, Harry would have said that they should get married. They would have been perfect for each other.

However, knowing what he did about her, and the fact that she could turn _very_ nasty when crossed, Harry decided that talking to her would be the best possible course of action. If he gave her the dirt that she wanted, then hopefully she would lose interest and leave him alone after this article.

"Of course, Ms. Skeeter," Harry replied. "I'll talk to you later, Cedric?"

"Sure, Harry," Cedric replied, looking amused. Since Cedric was related to Amos Diggory, a senior ministry official, Harry knew that Cedric probably knew more that he cared to about Rita Skeeter as well.

Rita Skeeter seized his arm in a vice-like grip, digging claw-like fingernails into his forearm, and tugged him out of the classroom and down the hall to a broom cupboard. Harry just barely managed to refrain from making an extremely inappropriate comment about what students _usually_ came into this broom cupboard to do.

"So, Harry, I can call you Harry?" She simpered as she rummaged through the purse and removed a white feather quill with a vicious looking green tip and a roll of parchment. She unrolled the parchment and set the quill in place.

"If you like," Harry agreed diplomatically.

"Thank you," her gracious tone was faker than some of the knockoffs that Gabbi professed to have seen in Paris. "Testing, Rita Skeeter for the _Prophet_," she added at the quill, which began writing in acid green ink of its own accord.

_Attractive blonde Rita Skeeter, forty-three, who's savage quill has punctured many inflated reputations –_

"That's enough," Rita said hastily, cutting off the quill. Harry couldn't suppress his snort. "Now, Harry," she added, smiling in such a predatory way that Harry had the urge to do something to protect his virtue, especially since they were in a broom cupboard. "Would you tell our readers why you did it?"

"Did what?" Harry was honestly confused.

"Why you entered your name in the Goblet, of course?"

"I didn't," Harry answered, feeling a heavy sense of dread starting to rise in the pit of his stomach.

"Harry, Harry," she said, laughing. "I understand that you want to avoid getting in trouble, but honestly, what can Dumbledore do about it now?"

With a flash of understanding, Harry suddenly _got it_. "I didn't. I made a magical oath, and I can do it again. But," he added. "I understand if that isn't the exciting story that you're looking for. However, you cannot print lies about me."

"I don't know what you mean, Harry." Rita was smiling steadily now, and her quill had stopped moving.

"Let me state this plainly, Ms. Skeeter. I was raised by Jean-Paul Delacour. I am not a pushover, and if you print lies about me I will sue you for slander and libel. There isn't anything interesting about how my name was entered, but perhaps you can interview the other champions and do your small piece on the Tournament, and then we can meet at a later date to discuss other things that have happened in my life." He gave her a predatory smile of his own.

"Like what, Harry dear?"

"Well, for instance, did you know that Sirius Black never got a trial?"

She took the bait. Hook, line and sinker. "Why, no, Harry, I did not. Tell me more..."

"Later," Harry answered. "The Tournament still needs covering, after all. And then I will tell you everything that I know about my godfather."

Rita's eyebrows rose to her hairline. "Your godfather?"

"Later," Harry repeated, smirking. "Now, about the Tournament. If we spin it right, you'll have a sensational story with nothing but the truth. What you should do is do a small piece on each champion, like a profile, if you like. Cover all four of us."

Rita seemed to like this idea. Or, she was willing to go along with it in order to get into the things that he had mentioned about Sirius Black. "So then, tell me about how you got into the tournament."

"Oh, you're going to like this one," Harry said. "Someone _Confounded_ the Goblet of Fire so that it would draw four names, and then put my name in under a fourth school. We figure that they did it because they wanted me dead. In fact, this whole elaborate plan absolutely _reeks_ of Voldemort." Rita flinched. "Why kill me himself, when he can enter me into a lethal Tournament and have it kill me. Except that it could fail. In fact, I intend on ensuring that it does fail. I have no plans to die. In fact, the others don't even need to consider me viable competition, at least not purposely. I just want to get through this alive."

He could practically _see_ the excitement dancing in Rita's eyes as she processed this. "Someone, probably You-Know-Who, put your name in the Goblet to kill you," she repeated gleefully. "And Sirius Black... well, I don't know what you were insinuating about him, but I'm sure that it will be revolutionary, or you wouldn't have mentioned it at all. That's all that I need from you, for now, at least. Why don't you send Viktor Krum next?"

"Always thinking about the publicity, aren't you?"

"Of course, Harry," she answered his evil smile with one of her own.

Harry exited the broom cupboard and went back to the classroom, where Cedric, Fleur and Hermione were engaged in their chatting, Bagman and Crouch were standing off to one side and Krum was leaning moodily against the wall. "Krum," Harry greeted him. Krum grunted at him. "You're supposed to go into the broom closet down the hall to talk to the reported. I'm sorry about her, but she'll just print trash about you if you don't cooperate."

Krum snorted. "I do have far too much experience vith reporters," he snarled. "But yes, I vill go to her."

Harry snorted. Krum obviously thought that he was intimidating, but Harry had faced worse than his supposed 'scowl of doom'. Voldemort sticking out the back of Quirrell's head, for one thing.

"Now," Bagman announced as Krum left the room. "It's almost time to get started. Where's Krum gone?"

"To talk to the reporter," Harry answered. "She wanted to talk to all of us for her article, she asked for him next. He'll probably only be a few minutes, then you can do whatever before she talks to them." He pointed at his sister and fellow Hogwarts champion.

"Oh, of course, of course," Bagman agreed amiably. "_The Daily Prophet_ should have the opportunity to report on the Tournament, after all. Now, I shall explain the ceremony of the weighing of the wands to you. Mr. Ollivander here, our resident wandcrafter, will simply be checking all four of your wands for proficiency and repair. They _will_ be your most important tool in the tasks to come. And then I'm sure that Ms. Skeeter will need some photos for her article." That was when he noticed Hermione. "Excuse me, miss—"

"Granger, sir. Hermione Granger. I came with Harry, since we were together when Colin found him. "

"You look familiar," Bagman said conversationally, tilting his head at her.

"We met at the World Cup, Mr. Bagman," Hermione answered. "I was with Arthur Weasley and his family, he got tickets in the top box."

"Of course, of course," Bagman said genially. "It is wonderful of you to support your friend in this way. Now, I suppose we should wait for Mr. Krum to get back," he added. "And for the Headmasters and Headmistress to get here."

"Thank you, Ludo," came a voice from the doorway, and Dumbledore strolled in. "We're here now. And here is Mr. Krum now! Excellent," Dumbledore said jovially. Krum had, indeed entered the room again on Karkaroff's heels, accompanied by Rita Skeeter herself.

They all faced Ollivander. "Ladies first, if you please," the aged wandmaker said.

Fleur handed over her wand without argument, and Ollivander examined it carefully.

"What is this wand core?" He asked mildly. "I've not worked with it before."

"Veela hair," Fleur replied.

"Grandmere," Harry added helpfully. "If that's important, that the supplier of the wand core is directly related to her within two generations."

"Yes, Mr. Potter. It is helpful. Thank you. And that explains it—Veela hair makes for rather temperamental wands, I've never used it much. But to each his own, I suppose."

Fleur rolled her eyes at him.

Ollivander soon pronounced Fleur's wand to be in perfect working order and gestured for Krum's next. "Grevorovitch, if I miss my guess. Hornbeam and... dragon heartstring?" he shot at Krum, who confirmed this guess with a nod.

Ollivander produced a fountain of wine out the end of Krum's wand and handed it back. "Now, Mr. Diggory." Cedric handed the wand over without ceremony. "Ah, this is one of mine, is it not?" He asked, sounding more enthusiastic.

"Yes, I remember it well. Containing a single hair from the tail of a particularly fine male unicorn… must have been seventeen hands; nearly gored me with his horn after I plucked his tail. Twelve and a quarter inches … ash … pleasantly springy. It's in fine condition… You treat it regularly?"

"Polished it last night," said Cedric, grinning.

Harry couldn't resist snorting, and he shot a look at Hermione, who pouted. Harry very well remembered the time that she had tried to talk him into polishing his wand in first year. Instead, he had managed to convince her that that was ridiculous. _Polishing a wand_? Who _did_ that, anyway, besides Cedric?

Ollivander returned Cedric's wand and gestured for Harry's next, those creepily luminescent eyes following his movements.

"Yes, most curious," Ollivander reiterated, sending Harry into a flashback of when he had first met Mr. Ollivander before his first year, when Hagrid and his parents had taken him to get his wand. "I believe that I said that we could expect great things from you, Mr. Potter." Harry flinched. "After all," he added, further examining it, "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible, yes, but great."

"And what, precisely," Karkaroff interrupted, "does He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named have to do with Potter's wand?"

"The Phoenix that provided this wand core did give another feather. Just one other. And it was always curious that, though this feather provided one of the strongest reactions to a matched wand that I have seen in decades, why, its brother—it's brother gave him that scar."

Everyone in the room was staring at him. Harry had never shared this piece of information with anyone but his family—Fleur, who already knew, had looped an arm around him. Hermione was staring at him as if she had never seen him before.

Harry decided to do something to prove that he wasn't dark. "I bet you could use more of those feathers, hey, Mr. Ollivander?"

Ollivander immediately caught on. "Yes, of course. Fine specimen. But that bird always did prove to be rather plucky and standoffish. Not at all unlike his master."

Dumbledore looked about three seconds away from rolling his eyes. "Yes, yes. Very funny, you two. _Really_. Fawkes isn't likely to give any other feathers _now_."

The knowledge that Harry's wand core had come from Dumbledore's Phoenix seemed to break the tension in the room, and everyone relaxed. Ollivander handed Harry's wand back before Bagman, seeming eager to break the tension further, enthused that photos were to be taken. Between the photographer trying to showcase Fleur, Rita Skeeter trying to drag Harry to the front and Krum doing everything that he could to avoid the camera lens and scowling when he failed, it was a rather lengthy photo shoot. Finally, though, the photographer had taken a shot that Rita approved of, and had dragged Fleur and Cedric off to finish her interviews with them. Harry and Hermione set out for the Great Hall.

Gabbi had had an excellent Transfiguration lesson. She had enjoyed McGonagall's teaching methods, found her to be fair, but strict, and to be good at explaining the process of the actual magic, which was something that really helped, according to her.

"I was so excited to have you here," Harry said wryly. "And we've barely spent any time together. Do you want to walk around by the lake?"

"Please," Gabbi agreed cheerfully. Just moving out of the castle with her at his side was enough to temporarily erase the stress from his frame.

Gabbi was too young for him to have romantic feelings for her, really. And he was definitely noticing Lavender Brown's well-developed chest recently, and Parvati Patil's luxuriously long legs. But he also knew that Gabbi would be even more gorgeous eventually, and what was a little waiting for someone that you loved? For now, though, Gabbi was his best friend. It made sense, since all of his other friends, nominally Ron and Hermione, had been shoved into the sibling bracket in his brain. Even Ginny, to some extent, though he didn't know her as well. They had talked more frequently, whenever they had the chance, after he had pulled her out of the Chamber of Secrets at the end of his second year.

Gabbi followed him to the tree next to the lake. It wasn't raining, and it wasn't that cold with cloaks on, and Harry was thinking that if they had time before it got dark (and cold), he could take her to see Hagrid. It had surprised him when Dumbledore had given him no indication that he knew about his changed guardianship, instead behaving as though he thought that Harry was still with his aunt and uncle. Harry assumed that his retrieval hadn't been organized by Dumbledore, and that it simply hadn't occurred to Hagrid to mention it to him.

"I love it here," Harry admitted. It wasn't something that he could tell just anyone—he _was_ a teenage boy, after all, and his reputation as an insensitive prat had to be upheld. But sitting under this tree on the deserted grounds after dinner with Gabbi, looking over the Durmstrang ship floating on the surface of the lake, Harry felt that he could say anything to her. And that was the mark of a good marriage, right? Being able to say anything to the person that you loved?

"It is peaceful," Gabbi offered, pushing him down by the shoulder and laying her head onto his torso. "But I think it reminds me of home more than anything. Like the fountain at the mansion."

"Yes," Harry answered. "That's it exactly. It reminds me of home. So much. And not much here does, but this particular view of the lake does." Harry pillowed his head on the crook of his arm, already propped on a protruding root. "What do you think of Hogwarts?"

"It is not as delicate as Beauxbatons," Gabbi answered softly. "Beauxbatons makes me think of a fairytale princess, with its grooming and the towers and turrets. Hogwarts was probably a war castle."

"During Anglo-Saxon times," Harry added gently. "Yes, of course. Everyone was at war then, and that's when the castle was built."

Gabbi sighed in a gentle sort of agreement. "I miss Maman and Papa," she murmured softly. "My first month or two was too busy to really feel homesick, but now I'm even further away..."

"We'll see them at Christmas," Harry reminded her. "Unless something comes up. But maybe we could work around it. We'll see. Do you want to write then a letter?"

"Fleur already sent Pierre," Gabbi said. "I don't have an owl to send it with."

"Hedwig's gone too," Harry admitted. "But the school has lots of owls for student use, you could borrow one of them."

Gabbi looked at him with her eyes shining. Clearly, being able to send the letter meant a lot to her. Harry sometimes forgot that she was only eleven, that she relied on her parents more than he did now. And as the baby of the family, she had always relied more on her parents than he and Fleur had done. Harry stood up and offered her his hand. "The owlery's a long way away, we'd better get going.

It was good to be able to see her smile properly, Harry mused to himself. Sometimes, she just looked so radiant that way.

**There's the end of chapter 4. I thank the reviewer who mentioned that there hadn't been much interaction between Harry and Gabbi—I was subconsciously avoiding it, because I wasn't sure how to approach it. She really is too young for real romance, after all. Add to that the fact that it was easy to avoid simply by covering other events, I wasn't even realizing what I was doing. So that's kind of my first shot at it. Hope you liked it, tell me what you think. We also get the Weighing of the Wands out of the way, and we have a Harry/Rita alliance. He knows how to deal with politicians better due to his upbringing, and the press as well. And he thinks that maybe he can use the sheep-like mentality of the wizarding world to free his Godfather, who he would like to be able to openly meet during Hogsmeade weekends, and stay with him whenever and all of that. **

**Tell me what you think.**

**~ITookTheOneLessTravelled**


	7. What Happens in Hogsmeade

**First, the unpleasant bit. I honestly wish that I didn't have to do this, and I thought that people had more maturity than this. And yes, I know that I could delete this review from my account. But having thought about it, I seriously don't care enough to go to the trouble. It's more embarrassing for the reviewer than for me, and I'm not charitable enough to want to prevent this person from embarrassing themselves. **

**To Patre, my anonymous reviewer: Honestly, clearly you've been reading my author's notes, since the thing that you chose to comment on was in them. Have I not been ranting for the last five chapters about respecting other people's opinions, even if you don't agree with them? And, it's super cowardly to do it by anonymous review so I couldn't report you for it. The review function is there to provide constructive criticism and feedback on the writing of my story. Since you didn't comment on the story once, and I don't even know if you even bothered to read it, I can very clearly state that your "feedback" has nothing at all to do with my writing. Okay, bash a character. Slam me for writing OOC, if you think that that is the case. If you really need to hit me that badly, find something in the story to critic, and do it respectfully. Otherwise, it just isn't cool. Let me reiterate: If you don't agree with me and you must inform me why I am wrong, do so in a constructive, respectful manner. Because you weren't just bashing the story, which I can deal with since you can't please everyone and I'm really writing to please myself, but you were bashing **_**me**_**. That comment about chick flicks, for instance, was overly personal, highly insulting and completely uncalled for. You actually almost prompted me to block anonymous reviews, but I've gotten enough constructive feedback and encouragement from them that I didn't want to do that. Just, seriously, if you can't be mature and respectful, then keep your opinions to yourself. **

**Now to answer a few questions.**

**Chi Vayne: Harry doesn't leave because he thinks that these adventures are all good fun and is eager for them to continue. It's his parents pulling him out that he's worried about, which is why he has given them an extremely edited version of events over the years. And despite the fact that Ron and Hermione are not his only friends, he is closer to them than he ever got to others over the years, due to the living arrangements at a boarding school: you rely more on friends, because your family is so far away. So it is a combination of reasons. But the reason that Harry didn't want to compete in the tournament is because he's outclassed and because the school is treating him terribly, not because he doesn't want to try. In fact, he even considered putting his own name in with Fred and George, but Dumbledore's potential anger, the school's potential reaction and the worry of his family pulled him back. Also, Hogwarts is kind of his last connection to his birth parents, and even though he doesn't long for them the same way that he does in canon, he still knows that they were his parents and they loved him. He knows that they died for him. **

**Mrpietan: As far as that goes, JKR never said it either. I mean, it could be any school. I guess I'll just say that there wasn't a school on there, and Harry is technically an independent competitor. If you could confound the Goblet into selecting an extra champion, then you could confound it into selecting a competitor without a school, too. I could say that it was some made up magical school, but it's honestly so irrelevant to the story that I'm not going to bother. **

"Harry!" Rita Skeeter greeted him enthusiastically as he slid into the booth across from her at The Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade. "So wonderful to see you. I trust you're well?"

"Yes, of course," Harry endured the usual pleasantries. "And yourself?"

"Wonderful," she repeated, eyeing him like a hawk would eye a mouse on the ground.

"Ms. Skeeter," Harry said, trying to get her attention. "I agreed to meet you here simply because I couldn't think of another real alternative, but this isn't exactly something that we should be discussing in public."

"The Hog's Head down the road, Ab Dumbledore's place, is less crowded," Rita offered.

"Even more likely to be overheard there, then—did you say _Dumbledore_?"

"Aberforth Dumbledore, the owner of the Hog's Head. The esteemed Headmaster's younger brother. Not many people know about that, though. They don't get on well." Rita looked _very _predatory right then, as if she would love to dig in that particular sandbox. Clearly, though, she didn't dare go after Dumbledore just yet.

"If it's less crowded, then there's even more chance of being overheard," Harry pointed out reasonably. "Maybe we should talk about this outside."

Clearly, Rita was so interested in what he wanted to say about Sirius that she didn't even bother to protest. Instead, she cast several high end privacy charms around the area that they settled into, a bench that was down a street away from the crowds of Hogwarts students.

"So, Harry. I have to admit, I was intrigued when you mentioned Sirius Black, and even moreso when I looked into it, and discovered that there weren't any trial transcripts. But what made you mention him?"

"Sirius Black was tossed into Azkaban for killing Peter Pettigrew and twelve muggles in an explosion. But that wasn't the only thing that they were going to charge him for," Harry answered. "I have to go back a few years for this, but when he was at Hogwarts, he had three best friends—Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin and my father, James Potter. So when my parents learned that Voldemort was going after them, they found an obscure charm called the Fidelius. It hides a Secret, in this case a location, in another living soul, called the Secret Keeper. Everyone knew exactly who the top contender for the Secret Keeper was Sirius. My father and Sirius were best friends in school, practically brothers," Harry explained.

"Go on," Rita looked like Christmas had come early—she knew enough about journalism by now to know that there was a _huge_ story here, one that would make her career if she was the one who broke it.

"Okay, so that's the accepted public story, at least by the people who knew about it. Then, Peter cornered Sirius on the street, and Sirius agreed that it was all his fault and blasted the street apart, killing twelve muggles and annihilating Peter so badly that all that was left of him was a single finger. Sirius then got carted off to Azkaban without a trial, and everyone had honestly forgotten about him completely until he escaped twelve years later."

"I'm guessing that there's more to that story," Rita murmured.

"Exactly. If _everyone _knew that Sirius was the person that James Potter trusted most, then wouldn't it be easy for Voldemort to know who the Secret Keeper was?"

"Yes, so," Rita prompted him, the pieces starting to fall together in her mind.

"Sirius realized that. And so he suggested a switch. Nobody would ever think that they would use the weak Peter Pettigrew, after all. So Sirius acted as decoy and Peter was the Secret Keeper."

"Which would have been wonderful, except that Peter Pettigrew was a traitor!" Rita said excitedly as the pieces clicked into place and she finally figured out where he was going with all of this. "So Peter betrayed them to You-Know-Who, and, and, and then what happened?"

"My parents were dead, Voldemort was vanquished and I had disappeared to live with my mother's sister and her husband and son. Sirius always was impulsive and reckless, and he never really was quite sane. He's a Black, after all. He has his off moments. And he even told me himself that it wasn't because of his stint in Azkaban."

"So you've talked to him?"

"In a minute. First I have to tell you what happened with the muggles. So Sirius lost his temper and in his grief, he went after Peter for revenge. But Peter was ready for him. He shouted for the whole street to hear that Sirius had betrayed my parents, and everyone knew that already so it didn't take much to convince them. And then Peter used the wand behind his back to shoot an exploding hex at the muggle gas pipe in the building behind him and blew up the whole street. Then he sliced his finger off and disapparated, leaving Sirius in the wreckage." The last thing that Harry wanted to do right now was mention that Peter was an unregistered animagus. Anyone who had known him had known that he wasn't a very powerful wizard. They would easily be able to make the leap that if Peter had managed, James Potter and Sirius Black had been with him the whole way through. And since Sirius' animagus form was the best way for him to move around without detection, Harry didn't want to compromise that protection.

"Sirius blamed himself, see. He still blames himself. It was his idea to switch Secret Keepers, his idea to trust Peter. That's why he was laughing and saying that it was all his fault when the aurors showed up. Not such a great moment to have a bout of that famous 'Black insanity', eh?"

Rita stared at him. "So Sirius Black really was innocent," she said in astonishment.

"An innocent man spent twelve years in hell on earth because nobody could be bothered to give him a proper trial. But you have to be careful how you spin it, Fudge has a very corrupt administration. If you make him look bad, he'll have you blacklisted."

Rita paused, realizing this. Fudge wouldn't react well to this story, but if they spun it the right way... "It was Bagnold's administration that tossed him into Azkaban without a trial," she said. "We can use that. Bagnold did it, Bagnold's fault. And Crouch. After his son got caught as a Death Eater, he was a fanatic. Black probably wasn't the only person in there who didn't have a trial."

"What if we blasted that wide open?" Harry suggested with a nasty smile. If there _was_ anyone in there that hadn't had a trial, and they were innocent as well as Sirius, he couldn't very well leave them there. And Rita was exactly the vehicle that he needed to get them out if that was the case.

"I can think of several high-profile trials that I attended before Crouch's son got caught—he was a shoe in for minister, the head of the DMLE. Where Amelia Bones is now. But Barty Junior destroyed his reputation, and he got shunted sideways into International Cooperation after Fudge took charge and cleaned house. The Lestranges, for one. Bellatrix, Rodolphus and Rabastan. They were pieces of work. And Augustus Rookwood, Igor Karkaroff—"

"_Karkaroff_? Like, the Headmaster of Durmstrang, Karkaroff?"

"Yes." Rita looked thrilled now, as if the chance to further tarnish someone's reputation was making her day. "He got off by giving them names. That's where they got Augustus Rookwood from. He gave them Snape, too. But Dumbledore told them that he'd turned spy. Let's see, who else."

"Where's Crouch now? Still in Azkaban?"

"Crouch Junior? He died, only a few months after being sentenced. Never left Azkaban."

"Hmm. I can't think of anyone high profile during that time that was arrested without a trial. But there could be low profile ones. Those days after Voldemort fell were chaos. And then when Crouch and the Lestranges went after the Longbottoms... The head of the DMLE and the last surviving members of an Ancient and Noble House, along with the elder one's wife. No one could talk about anything after that."

"The Longbottoms? What happened with them?" Harry heard Neville's name. That must be his parents—Harry knew that Nev had been raised by his grandmother, which probably meant that his parents were dead. "Did they kill them?"

"No, of course not. Lots of people got killed in the war, Harry. The Longbottoms wouldn't have been anything special if that was the case. But Frank and Alice Longbottom were Aurors. Decorated veterans, a couple of the best that the department had, along with your father and Sirius Black. The Lestranges and Crouch's kid broke into their house a few nights after You-Know-Who fell and tortured them into insanity with the Cruciatus Curse. The Aurors arrived in time to stop them from touching the baby, Neville Longbottom. But it was too late for the parents. They're still in St. Mungos—they can't even recognize their friends, family."

Harry stared in horror. That was almost—no, it _was _worse than what had happened to his parents. His parents were dead—they could rest in peace knowing that they had died protecting their son and now he had other people raising him, people that didn't seek to replace them in his life but were focussed on keeping him safe and happy. His parents could rest. But Neville—his parents didn't even recognize him. Prisoners in their own minds, but still alive. They couldn't rest, couldn't stop, but couldn't really live either.

"And Rookwood got nailed for sharing state secrets with You-Know-Who," she went on. "He was an unspeakable. Antonin Dolohov, that's another one. _He _got arrested for brutally murdering Gideon and Fabian Prewitt. Lucius Malfoy got cleared of all charges at the same time that there was suspiciously large donation to the administration. Nott, Crabbe, Goyle... all the same. But they all got trials. I think that's it, at least for the inner circle ones. Fenrir Greyback was wanted, but they never caught him. He's always been a slippery one. It's illegal for a werewolf to infect others, and there's proof that Greyback did tons. Children. He likes children. He'd threaten the children with lycanthropy to make the parents behave. But either way, he was wanted before the war, long before his name ever came up in conjunction with You-Know-Who."

"But you could still look into it. And as for Sirius, when you break the news you should just try to pin it on Bagnold. Paint Fudge free of blame. And Crouch makes a good scapegoat for him to use if some of the negativity hits him too. Everyone knows that he got pretty extreme after that, even though they don't know about his son. But it isn't hard to think that with everything that I've heard about him, that he would have tossed someone into Azkaban without a trial."

"Perfect," Rita said cheerfully, smiling that predatory smile at him again. "My article about the Tournament is going to run tomorrow. I think you're going to like it."

"And if this goes well, perhaps I can tell you about my other adventures during school? I've had some life-threatening fun every year that I've been here. This Tournament is nothing compared to second year especially. You can only write one article at a time, Ms. Skeeter, and you wouldn't want them to overshadow each other. Let's just stick to this for now."

She nodded, and Harry couldn't help but think that this would be the start of a beautiful friendship. She collapsed the privacy spells and went on her way, and Harry slipped inside the Three Broomsticks to meet Hermione and Fleur, who for some reason didn't feel the need to hang out with her own friends. Not that Harry minded, though. And he knew that she enjoyed being around people that didn't hate her for being who she was, and when she was with them everyone was too busy staring to whisper about him.

Hermione smiled at him before getting back to chatting with Fleur about some advanced Transfiguration theory and Harry took a sip of the butterbeer that she had ordered him. It was a pity that Gabbi couldn't come to the village with them—next Hogsmeade weekend he would have to stash her under his cloak and take her alone, since Hermione most definitely wouldn't approve of him sneaking an underage student off the grounds and Fleur would want to come with them. And who on earth brought their older sister along on a semi-quasi date (though not too much of one—Harry wasn't a pedophile, and he was way too old for her at this stage to really be thinking about dating), Harry didn't know. But he did know that neither he nor Gabbi would appreciate her presence.

The girls were interrupted from their intensely technical chat by the appearance of Hagrid and Mad-Eye Moody. It was honestly hard to determine which was more intimidating in that moment. Hagrid crouched down next to them as Moody stumped on. "Ello, Arry. Ermione. And Fleur, tha' you? Bin too long since I saw you—when I took Arry for his school supplies first year, yes. And look at you now. All grown up and Triwizard Champion to boot."

Fleur blushed. "It is good to see you too, Hagrid."

"Arry, Fleur, I have something to show you. Tonight at midnight, come to my house. Bring that cloak of yours, Arry. You'll need it." Harry paused.

"Sure, Hagrid." Fleur looked annoyed, but Hermione shook her head.

"It's best to humour Hagrid when he gets like this, Fleur. Just look at whatever he wants to show you and then get back to bed. You'll have Harry's cloak, you won't get caught," Hermione said as soon as Hagrid was out of earshot, following in the same direction as Moody.

Fleur glanced over at Harry and let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine. Whatever. Just—if we get in trouble for this, it's all your fault."

"Please, I have tons of experience with being out past curfew," Harry said airily. "I _never _get caught."

"Excuse me?" Hermione snorted at him. "Norbert comes to mind."

"Well—_almost _never. Same difference. But still. I'm very good at sneaking around after curfew, despite how badly Snape would like to catch me. And Dumbledore knows about my cloak—he hasn't really told anyone. I know that McGonagall has guessed—she knew that James Potter had it in school. And Snape knows—discovered it for sure last year in the shrieking shack."

"_Anyway_," Hermione cut in drastically. "How did your interview go? Do you think she's going to twist your words? Rita Skeeter's dangerous, from what you've told me."

"Oh, no, Hermione. She won't dare twist my words, not now. Not when I dropped some hints about my school career to her. She just wants the whole story too badly to risk getting on my bad side."

"About that school career, Harry," Fleur cut in with a clipped tone of voice. "What, precisely, is it that you've been avoiding telling me all about? Maman and Papa knew that you had gotten up to some things, that there was some incident with a loose monster in your second year. But I heard you after your name came out of the Goblet—the things that you said! Did they happen, Harry?"

Harry sighed. If he was really going to tell Rita about that so that she could publish it in the _Prophet_, his sister deserved to know from him first. "Okay, I'll tell you. But not now. Later, after we meet Hagrid. I have to talk to someone first about whether I can tell you what happened."

Hermione understood immediately. '_Ginny_?' she mouthed at him across the table. When he nodded, she bestowed him with an approving smile. He certainly wasn't going to tell Rita about his second year without Ginny's permission, either.

Having thought of that, Harry found himself across from Ginny at a table in the corner only a couple of hours later. Hermione and Fleur had begged off another drink and headed back to the castle. Harry had been ready to throw in the towel with them when he had spotted the redhead and waved her over for a drink.

"Hey, Gin. How are you?"

"Good, Harry. I'm good. But I doubt that you're acting like this because you want to exchange pleasantries. What is going on?" Ginny traced a finger around the bottle neck of her butterbeer.

"Gin, you know that I would never tell anyone about what happened in the Chamber without your permission, right?"

"Of course, Harry. I trust you. Is that all that you wanted to say?"

"No. First, Fleur has demanded to know about my school career, and Gabbi is going to want to know as well."

"Of course, Harry. Tell them everything. Was that all? I can't believe that you thought that I would have a problem with you telling your family what happened."

"No. That wasn't all. Aside from that, well—" Harry broke off, trying to find a way to word it.

"Go on." Ginny looked a mixture of apprehensive and amused at his deliberations.

"I want your permission to tell the whole world."

Ginny nearly knocked over her butterbeer. "What?"

"There's this reporter—Rita Skeeter. She was eyeing me like a bird of prey watching a piece of meat. I've heard of her. I've no doubt that she would have jumped on the chance to destroy my reputation. So I baited her with Sirius—you know that that would be a massive headline. But now she wants to know about the rest of my Hogwarts years. We could maybe even pin Lucius Malfoy with this. But I would never do it without your permission."

Ginny paused. "Everyone would hate me. Or pity me."

"_No_! No, Gin, they wouldn't! The diary—you deserve a metal for that, not pity. And they can't possibly blame you for it! You were possessed. And nobody died, so ultimately no harm done. In fact, the person that came the closest to actually dying was you. So really..."

"Do you honestly believe that?"

"Do you honestly believe that I would tell the story without you there?" Harry returned, mildly insulted by what she apparently thought of him.

"No. Okay. We'll tell the story. Just tell me when and where, and I'll meet you."

"Thank you, Gin. You're very brave."

"I better be."

**Sooo. That one is a bit shorter than any of the others, but I figured this made sense for a chapter break. And also, it's been awhile. No Gabbi in this chapter because it's so short. But Harry's alliance with Rita Skeeter. Next time: DRAGONS? THE FIRST TASK IS DRAGONS? Rita's first article comes out and Sirius' letter finally arrives. Possibly some Harry and Ron interaction. We'll see.**

**Oh, also: Please please please please please go vote in my pole, which I created mostly out of curiosity. You'll see. Just please do it. It'll only take you like two minutes. **

**~ITookTheOneLessTravelled  
**


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